August 16, 1980 (Revisiting the Past)

I'm going back through what comprised my senior year of high school and first semester of college in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Come along for the ride. New posts every day or so mixed in with other things.

August 16, 1980. The White Animals headlined a big show at the War Memorial Auditorium on this night. I was there with the usual gang of idiots (Mad magazine reference for you uncultured snobs) and it was an interesting concert. First, it was odd that opening act Sussman Lawrence got a big write up in The Tennessean, but our beloved White Animals seemed to be an afterthought. WRVU, too, was giving the band from Minnesota a push as I heard several songs by them on the college radio station in the week leading up to the show. Local Nashville cow punks Walk the West were also playing.

The concert was my first chance to see Walk the West live and they were great. Singer and rhythm guitar player Paul Kirby had this great twang to his vocals and all the girls in the crowd really dug him. Sussman Lawrence featuring future solo star Peter Himmelman were an interesting pop group, sorta dancy and sorta not. I suppose they could be called New Wave. The main event for us was seeing the great White Animals again and just like when they had played Cantrell's back in May, they were super tight filled with fire, passion, and most of all fun rock and roll played to perfection. There was one big hiccup though. We were down in the floor seats of War Memorial and as the concert got really cooking we noticed the lighting rig begin to sway. Some of my friends had split for balcony seats earlier in the show thinking it would be safer. I followed suit with the rest of the gang about half an hour into the White Animals set. You could really see the lighting rig teetering near disaster from the vantage point of the balcony seats which were on the side. 

Sure enough, a little over midway the lighting rig toppled to the floor hitting several people which put a stop to the concert. Kevin Gray of the White Animals asked if everyone was ok, then an ambulance arrived and carted some people away. It was awkward as hell, but once people were taken to get looked at, the show resumed as the band continued to play the songs we loved through their show closer mega cover of "Gloria" and we wandered out into the hot August night wondering if anybody had been seriously injured by the lighting rig toppling over. Decades later I would find out from Kevin that there had been no life threatening injuries, just some bad bruises for the people that got hit. Of course, I've always felt the lighting rig collapse was of some metaphysical importance. A harbinger of sorts. Not of doom, but of something just out of the reach of mere thought.