(editor’s note – no ex post facto proof for the Rockets)
REO Speedwagon draws SPAC’s top crowd for ’81
by Steve Webb, The Knickerbocker News, August 31, 1981
Each year, one rock concert at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center transcends musical criteria and becomes an event. Preseason sales are frantic, and a steady stream of lawn tickets are sold up until the date.
Last year the event was the Cars concert; in 1978 it was Fleetwood Mac. But they were both outstripped in attendance by a journeyman rock ‘n’ roll band, REO Speedwagon, which played about 1½ hours of music Sunday night at the center.
More than 31,000 persons — the third largest crowd in the center’s 16-year history — crowded the center Sunday for the REO Speedwagon concert.
Center officials set the unofficial figure at 31,400, with a final figure to be available after the center’s annual postseason audit. It almost certainly was the largest crowd of the 1981 season, with four remaining concerts that have had smaller advance sales than the Sunday concert’s total of approximately 12,000 tickets.
The REO date sold out the 5,600-seat amphitheater by mail order May 5, five days before the center’s box office opened and only 13 days after it was announced. The previous high mark this season was 28,000 who attended Pat Benatar’s Aug. 16 show at the center.
Sunday’s crowd was the largest in five years, since the Beach Boys drew 32,200 persons in 1976. The all-time record was 33,700 for a 1971 concert by The Who, when fewer rock groups performed at the center.
The people poured into the center Sunday afternoon, filling the parking lots with cars and causing “latecomers” arriving a half-hour before the performance to use less legal spaces.
Getting into the theater was a problem that involved worming through a six-people-deep layer of flesh, then maneuvering around sound mixing consoles that took up much more space than at usual SPAC events. A large group of seating on the right side of the theater could only be approached by entering from the east side, and by the end of the opening act, the walkway behind the seating was clogged with people.
Once inside, the listener got pretty much what was promised. REO played the hits, opening with the Bo Diddley-style “Don’t Let Him Go” from “High Infidelity” and cruising through such pieces as the ballad “Keep on Lovin’ You, ” the slightly faster “Take It on the Run” and material spanning the group’s 12-year history.
Certainly REO delivered the goods far more justly than the Cars, which responded to its 21,000 crowd last year with a desultory 1¼ hours of noncommittal music. The Illinois-bred journeyman rock band put on a professional show, exhibiting a craft for which most bar bands would trade their bass guitarists.
One feels out of step to have been bored by it all. Comparing REO with the other bands to draw as many people at SPAC, The Who and the Beach Boys, I see it as lacking a certain artistic drive that separates rock heroes from those bar bands. Lead singer Kevin Cronin avoids sounding too affected in his performances, but it is by perfecting a stance that takes no risks. Guitarist Gary Richrath has his riffs down, but they come to too little purpose.
REO Speedwagon performed a decent concert in what will undoubtedly be SPAC’s biggest show in 1981, but its aftertaste is not as satisfying as several less attended shows this season, including concerts by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Santana and the Jefferson Starship.
The Post-Star, August 29, 1981
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