Hill cemetery 70 after falling with language around number foundation mentioned the concert tulsa the next day and we had not planned on going or maybe didn't know about it. on the way home we turned back to tulsa, We had paged when we got there and got Well with the buzz of the boc walsh show wichita still buzzing ears we waded into this day hot as hell outdoor sweatfest. Kansas was a groove and being handed up all the pipefulls of weed that they could reach out to try from some very well stocked and generous fans all along the front of the stage, ahh those were the days. Terrible was fun but by this time i was ready to here ladies and gentlmen on your feet or on your knees... Best of the night was Bucks at least opinion. that was always a fav of mine. When we went over into Canada, we forgot that we had about 200 lbs of various fireworks bought out west around the 4th of July the back of our mostly really sinister looking silver tubes about 4 ft that were roman candles with about 25 balls them... we had been using them at outdoor shows, shooting off a bunch of them attached to the back of the stage at the end of our show... anyway, the US authorities were having NONE OF THAT and held us up for ages and dismantled a goodly portion of the looking for other contraband... they kept our fireworks too... The Showco crew got busted. We had the day off and somebody smelled them smoking reefer at their hotel and called the cops... we were the much cheaper hotel across town... We went to Falls and rode Maid of the Mist... Really untogether gig they couldn't make up their mind when we could load when we could eat lunch, when we could put our gear onstage, when we could wipe our ass etc.... openers are really at the mercy of the headliners most cases, but we eventually got along great with the Heepsters... But we had a great food fight the dressing room later... The sum of our experiences our teenage years tend to over into our whole adult lives, both good and bad. For me the good is always associated with the amazing concerts that rolled through Flint and Saginaw, Mich., during the 1970s and Blue Oyster Cult, more than any other, shaped outlook, dark as it often be, and led me to New City and a career journalism. The Flint Saginaw corridor was bustling the 1970s, with the two cities and their myriad auto plants still cranking out V-8 muscle cars to solid sales. Still, ways it was a cultural wasteland and to friends, the view into a magical world of possibilities came the Creems, Rock Scenes, Circuses and Hit Paraders we grabbed up from the drug store each month. Around 1974, Purple, Heep, Tull and of course Zep ruled the rock roost, but friends and I were always intrigued by BOC. They seemed to come from off-center a lead singer with a voice as much menace as melody, a drummer who seemed to skip stones instead of sledge-hammering, and most of all, a lyrical bent that placed it squarely the dark American experience instead of the pastoral verbiage coming from the English bands. At age 14, we finally got our first live BOC experience. The of 1975 at the Saginaw Civic Center. BOC was sandwiched between Texas boogie band Blank and Uriah Heep on their Return to Fantasy tour. For Cult, this was at least nominally their On Your Feet Or On Your Knees tour live albums, from Kiss Alive that year and Frampton Comes Alive the following, were breaking bands a big way. We loved, fully devoured the live two-fer BOC seemed to play at double speed from their already fast studio arrangements, and that was catnip to us. Strangely, the band opened with Stairway To the Stars that night; a they didn't even include on the live album. But they looked cool, Alan with his ever-present dangling from his mouth, a happy little skin-thumping gnome behind the with his strange little half-smirk while he fired off one blitzkrieg solo after another. By the time the five-guitar attack of ME 262 was over, we were hooked more than ever. Strangely, the usually boisterous Saginaw crowd didn't seem to know what to make of them were BOC too cerebral to win over the Midwest? That question was answered 13 months later when they returned to the SCC as a headliner, with Rush supporting on their 2112 tour. It just shows you what a hit single can do for a band now the crowd was fully on BOC's side as they whipped through the Agents of Fortune tunes and blew everyone's mind with the lasers and strobes during a blistering version of Flaming Telepaths, still one of the most memorable single songs I've seen among the more than 1 concerts I attended. Even though Saginaw and Flint were barely 35 away from each other, they were treated as separate touring markets, and BOC returned to the area barely four weeks later for a show at the Flint this time supported by Mahogany Rush and Starz. That October 1976 marked the first time I ever stayed out all night never did a 15-year-old