Utopia, Drumsticks, & Cigarettes - March 16, 1980

Since I've started talking about concert misadventures with my previous blog about The Police, I thought I'd mention another.

This was back on March 16, 1980 and the show was Utopia, which was a band started by Todd Rundgren that evolved into a unique pop-flavored foursome with him, Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton, and Willie Wilcox.  At the time, they had just released one of their best-remembered albums, Adventures in Utopia and were touring to promote it.  This brought them to Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio.

My brother was - and still is - a huge fan of Rundgren's work. With him being the older brother in a house with one stereo, that meant one thing in particular: that I listened to a lot of Todd Rundgren as well.  Fortunately, I loved what I heard and became a big fan as well.  By that point, we had already seen Utopia perform live once, back in 1979 at Legend Valley in Columbus (another show that I should blog about sometime), but that was an outdoor setting with multiple bands playing shorter sets, so Hara Arena was a chance to see the band perform a full show.  Better yet, a full show in a surrounding where you were more than a hundred yards away while avoiding stepping on people passed out in the mud.

We bought tickets to the show and it was supposed to be my brother, another friend, and myself going to the show.  Then the friend had to back out, so my brother invited a guy we both knew that, for reasons listed below, I'll refer to with a fake name, Smith.

Smith was a good-looking guy who could be a sweet-talker to just about anybody and he knew it.  He could charm a snake out of its skin when he wanted to.  The downside was that he liked a drink more often than "now and then."

Now, over the years, I've found that there are people who like a drink and people who like to get drunk. Furthermore, there are three types of drunks of which all are annoying and none of them worth being around for more than two drunks maximum:

1) The funny drunk - who will drink until they get silly and then either break a limb or your couch before vomiting and passing out.

2) The angry drunk - who will drink until they get angry and then break your couch or someone's head before vomiting and passing out.

3)  And the worst, the drunk who thinks he/s the hero - he will break someone's head or smash a window, and then tell you later about how he was the life of the party and saved everyone from some terrible misfortune that was about to happen ... then wonder why no one else remembers it that way.

Smith was the third one. So he could be fun to be around until he had a couple of drinks in him. Worse, he could talk nearly everyone else to join him into drinking and then get into multiple fights.  And because I didn't drink, the idea slowly became one where I was not the designated driver for this gang of friends, but rather a herder - making sure no one got lost or stabbed by someone they insulted in the bar. Which means, everyone else could do whatever they wanted because they knew I would be there to protect them, which kinda sucked for a 16-year-old. Worse, Smith would suddenly believe himself to be the hero of the group and would jump into situations where he would start fights thinking he was somehow protecting the universe.  After all, this is the guy who once punched a truck coming at him at about 15 miles-per-hour because someone wouldn't let him play Pac-Man at the arcade.

To give you an idea: once in Columbus, Ohio, I was with him at a bar and as I was dragging him out, he pushed me into a group of guys coming in.  Because I had an umbrella with me at the time, I ended up poking one of the guys with the umbrella, which led to that guy shoving me back.  Smith jumped in, drunkenly swinging at the guy and successfully connected with the back of my head and my jaw in the process.  As the guy's friends pulled him away and I pushed Smith out the door, Smith stopped me to lecture me on getting into fights with strangers and how he had saved me from certain death.

To be fair, there was one positive thing that came out of that whole period with Smith: it is probably the main reason I've never picked up drinking.  I so much hated having to be the "parent" while everyone else got stupid, that I swore I wouldn't do that to anyone else.  So I never bothered picking up drinking.

Besides, I never understood the attitude of what brings people to drink when no one likes the taste of it at first, but then rationalize it as something "you'll get used to if you want to get tipsy."  Well, I can beat myself in the head to get tipsy, and I guess I could get used to that too.

But seriously, on top of all that, with my hearing, I'm already slightly closed off from the real world in a way.  Why would I want to make that any worse for myself.  I'm confused enough sober as it is.

And I got off-track ....

My brother and I arrived at Smith's house to go to the show and his mom invited us to sit on the couch. My brother sat at one end of the couch and I - not giving it a second thought - sat closely next to him on the couch.

"Bubba," he asked.  He called me Bubba as a nickname that he used namely because he thought it would irritate me.  "Bubba?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Are we dating?"

I didn't understand what he meant.  Then I realized that I was sitting way too close to him and moved down the couch.  Smith's mom roared with laughter at that one.

When Smith came out, we headed off to the show at about 4 in the afternoon, which should have told me then that something was not quite right.  As it turns out they had decided to pick up some beer and ... something stronger ... let's say hooch just because it sounds better ... at a drive-through on the way. (For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, the drive-through was a barn-like building stocked with party supplies, and you would drive into the place, tell the attendant what beer, wine, and snacks you wanted, and they would bring it to the car while you waited.  At one time at least it was also good for high-school kids because they rarely carded for booze.)

A short while later we got to the arena, but then sat for several hours as my brother and Smith drank.  To be fair, my brother wanted to see Utopia with a clear enough head to remember, so he didn't drink much.  Unfortunately, that meant that Smith drank more than his quota.

So by the time we got into the place, he was already tanked and needed to be carried around ... by me, namely.

Now Hara Arena was once a great place to see a concert, but by 1980 the general attendance area on the floor - which was the entire floor - had become essentially a giant mosh pit without the dancing. Fights breaking out were common, and it didn't matter who the band was playing on-stage, someone was bound to get a bloody lip or black eye before the night was over.  I recall once going to see Heart and Kansas  and there were several fights going on during the Kansas portion of the show.

I mean ... Kansas.  Does that make any sense?  Besides the obvious joke about Kansas being so bad that someone would have to punch someone else, would there ever be a reason for Kansas music to make you so aggressive that you wanted to punch someone?

"All the world's for living"

*POW! CRASH! PUNCH*

"When love is what you find ...."

*SMASH! CRUNCH! Bleed, bleed, bleed*

It got so bad at that show that one of the guitarist was looking out into the crowd to watching the fights and all you could do is shrug and hope he continued playing something from Leftoverture.

Anyway, so that was Hara and we were walking into it with Smith leaning on my shoulder.  However, at this point, it was still early, so people were walking around and things were pretty calm.  As we moved up near the front of the stage, Smith became sober enough to decide he needed a beer, so he grabbed me to go with him and moved through the crowd.  I also believe he grabbed a woman in a very indecent manner on the way out, as she turned around and slapped me in the face with a very hurt look on her face.  I had no idea why until I realized what had happened, which only made me feel bad that this person thought I had been the one to attack her like that.

Eventually we made our way back into the crowd, with Smith already finishing his beer.  The show begins and it's a great show - full of older songs and pretty much everything from the Adventures album. The only downside in the show was that, the band was suffering from some technical problems during the show - especially when Todd came out to play a saxophone solo that could not be heard from the stage beyond a few notes here and there.  Getting frustrated, he went up to a microphone and screamed, "Turn up my F*CKING SAX!!" before squawking a flat note and then stomping off-stage.  (Mind you, if there was ever a recording of that show at Hara, I always thought Turn Up My F*cking Sax! would have made for a great bootleg album title.)

Beyond that minor blip, however, the show was fantastic.

Then, as the show was reaching its last number before the encore, Willie Wilcox - the drummer - decided to throw his sticks out into the audience.  A perfectly normal thing to happen at a show, and I was in an excellent position to see one of the sticks flying directly towards me.  It bounced off the hands of a few people in front of me and then off my chest and on to the floor right in front of me.

My immediate thought was, "Oh, great!  I'll grab this drumstick!"

It was also the immediate thought of about 14 other guys standing around me.

As I bent over to grab it, I suddenly found myself being jumped on by these 14 other people with the same clever idea.  In the commotion, a pair of new glasses I had just gotten the week before flew off my head and my next view was the cement floor and multiple elbows and knees in my face as people scrambled for their chance to get this stick.

Eventually people began to get up, which was not easy, as Smith decided a dog-pile was fun and kept jumping everyone.  Then just on me as I was the only one left on the ground.  I finally managed to twist myself around to find that two men were fighting over the stick above me.  Meanwhile, I could see my glasses about three feet away on the floor.  Fortunately, no one had stepped on it, but I knew it was only a matter of time if I didn't grab them.  So I had the choice of *maybe* getting Willie Wilcox's drumstick by reaching straight up for it, or crawl over to the glasses I needed just a few feet away.

I reached for the glasses, and then attempted to get up.  Smith, kept falling on me anyway, as he was in no shape to stand up on his own by that point.  Managing to avoid him, I reached a hand out on the floor and found that someone had lost a full pack of cigarettes during the fight.  I didn't smoke, but my brother did and I thought to myself, "Well, that was a mess, but I did get this prize that my brother can have."

Standing up, I smiled to myself and showed the cigarettes to Smith.  He frown, shook his head, snatched the cigarettes from my hand,. tore the pack in half in front of me, tut-tutting me about having to save me from taking up smoking.

This would be the only part of the evening he would remember later - saving me from taking up smoking.  Yes, that's exactly why I went to the Utopia concert - to become a smoker.  Foiled.

So, in all, what were the lessons learned?  Well, a great show, for one thing, even if Todd had problems with his sax (and don't we all at one time or another?). Second, no matter how cool something thrown from the stage may be, you're probably much better off just dodging the commotion it will cause. And finally, I realized that Smith - like most people like him - was duty-bound to mess up a good time for his friends whenever possible.  Which he would continue to do for a while longer before he finally took it too far.

But, again, another story for another time.