2005 FMB Show Ideas

[Ohiogal]

As for the Chicago show, Cheryl Tyson and I wrote our own lyrics for the music... I wish I could find them. It was funny...

What? Drum Majors have to follow orders? I don't remember reading that in our Smith Walbridge Drum Major manual... nope, not in there!

[BGMello04]

I just wanted to make certain that everyone take note of the errata.

Originally posted by BGMello04:
errata: Unfortunately, I can not personally address your show ideas to the directors. I have already sent in my 3 ideas to the AD, and any further discussion will just be for entertainment purposes. I'm sorry if I've offended anyone by asking what the fans would like to see. As a music student, I'm all about pleasing ourselves first, and the audience after. ie. Halloween, Frontiers X4, etc. I just feel that the FMB is the largest student organization on campus with the most exposure and I wouldn't mind seeing what others are interested in seeing us perform. No harm, no foul.

[Rightupinthere]

I just wanted to make certain that everyone take not of the errata.

Originally posted by BGMello04:
errata: Unfortunately, I can not personally address your show ideas to the directors. I have already sent in my 3 ideas to the AD, and any further discussion will just be for entertainment purposes. I'm sorry if I've offended anyone by asking what the fans would like to see. As a music student, I'm all about pleasing ourselves first, and the audience after. ie. Halloween, Frontiers X4, etc. I just feel that the FMB is the largest student organization on campus with the most exposure and I wouldn't mind seeing what others are interested in seeing us perform. No harm, no foul.

Now that you've said that twice, I can see that you mean it. Good.

[graceful]

Did you not notice the part of the email that stated, "3) Don't confer. Make this an independent project - it will give us a better read on the band's interest (rather than a large group collectively voting and therefore tipping the scales.)"

Sure it's great to have outsiders input but the ideas you present should be your own that you think would be fun. If the players on the field are having fun, it will show and the crowd will have fun, too. Besides, people graduating and not marching that will be in the stands next year still got the email and got to send their ideas as well.

For once, McMetz and I are on the same page.

I too agree with them (but I don't need a frame to remember this )

[Schadenfreude]

Perhaps I'm talking too much at this point, but I did want to say a bit more about the Poe Ditch Music Festival. I get the feeling people are nodding their heads and not really appreciating what went down 30 years ago.

The Poe Ditch Music Festival was the first and last real concert ever held at Perry Stadium. It took place June 1, 1975. Here was the line up, in no particular order:

Styx ("Lady" was apparently breaking big about that time)
Johnny Winter
Montrose (Sammy Hagar's first band)
Golden Earring (a two-hit wonder. After "Radar Love," "Twilight Zone" would come in the early 1980s)
Ritchie Havens
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Pure Prairie League
The Outlaws (Most of you have heard "Green Grass and High Tides")

So, no, it wasn't exactly the Rolling Stones -- but it was a good, solid, mostly AMERICAN rock 'n' roll line up.

And people came from all around -- at least 25,000 of 'em if memory serves, most primed for a day of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. It was probably the largest crowd ever to fill the stadium up to that point.

But things got out of hand -- not in the sense of an actual riot. But this was just too many people for Bowling Green to handle, particularly with all the students gone.

If you can picture all of downtown Bowling Green converted into one giant Howard's Club H -- except a whole lot more more motorcyle-weilding long hairs -- that was about what one would have seen that night along Main Street after the show, I think.

Sometime that night, a downtown building -- perhaps a bar -- burned down. Arson was suspected, although I'm not sure it was ever proven.

There also may have been a couple sexual assaults, although I'm not certain (and I only mention this so that folks here understand that, 30 years later, a whole lot of long time residents would probably assume that happened even if it didn't. Such was the terror that night inspired in Bowling Green, Ohio).

Meanwhile, shards of glass were being picked up off the field for months thereafter.

So that was the end of the Poe Ditch Music Festival. I assume the unversity promised the community and the football staff that it would never rent out the stadium again.

You may be thinking at this point: Well, Schadenfreude, a Poe Ditch Music Festival retrospective sounds like it would be in terrible taste.

Except that I don't think so, not if it was handled it right.

The way I see it, the Poe Ditch Music Festival was something most people wanted to forget as soon as it happened.

On the other hand, it is one hell of a story -- a story that probably ought to be retold more often than it is. For one brief moment in time, a piece of the wacky, wild rock 'n' roll world converged on Bowling Green, Ohio. This deserves to be remembered, despite all the warts that came with it.

And, when I think of the challenge of doing a show based on the music of the Outlaws or Montrose or whatever -- and how to-a-T such a show would fit Northwest Ohio in contrast to some of the Broadwayesque shows the band seems to prefer -- it just feels right to me.

I think you could even promote it -- to WIOT-FM, to the Sentinel-Tribune or The BG News or whatever.

(None of these folks are going care two hoots if you all do another tribute to Mama Mia or the Lion King or whatever. But a retrospective on the Poe Ditch Music Festival? People's heads would perk up).

That's my take.

And, hell, maybe you could get Ronnie Montrose or whoever to come back for the show. (Bet he ain't too busy!)

I've tried to be accurate in this post. My only source is this link to a weird French Styx fan site (God bless Google):

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:xP ... 1975&hl=en

For those really interested in the festival, pull out old issues from The BG News. They had quite a photo spread on the whole thing.

[Lord_Byron]

Sometime that night, a downtown building -- perhaps a bar -- burned down. Arson was suspected, although I'm not sure it was ever proven.

That would have been the "Gigolo". It was on the west side of Main St. on the block between the Cla-Zel and Pisanello's.

It probably was arson, but it could have been someone dropped a match and the alcohol impregnated floors spontaneously combusted.

[Ohiogal]

I thought it was the hotel on the corner of Prospect and Wooster... that's the only fire I remember of a bar... of course 30 years ago I was only 5, but i do remember that fire... (it's a parking lot now by BW3 and Sterlings). They never did build anything else there.

[Lord_Byron]

That was the Ross Hotel. It burned down sometime in the '80s.

We used to drink there all the time.(Thursday was 3 Labbats for $1.00) They had a great shuffelboard table along the windows by Wooster St. Plus, there was a crazy lady who lived in the hotel that was mildly entertaining.

[goofyeuph]

I wish Labbats were still 3 for a dollar. That's one of my favorite beers