The Road Runners @ New Year’s
By the end of 1966, the Road Runners were a band to be taken seriously. They had earned enough respectability to be the choice at the Officers' Club at the Savanna Army Depot for the New Year’s Eve performance. There is little doubt that the crowd held few if any hard-core Road Runner fans, and the boys were bound to have been on their best behavior. It was certainly a far different audience than the one that the group hosted the previous Saturday night at the Mt. Carroll Farm Bureau Hall. They probably added a slow song or two for each set and even decided beforehand to not play ‘Satisfaction’ until the end of the evening.
The group only had one more holiday together in the ‘60’s (1967), which was a memorable event for multiple reasons.
Before visiting those let’s jump ahead to another unforgettable (for the RR at least) New Year’s: an impromptu reunion December 31, 1983, at the new Riverboat Lounge. That night the stage was graced by everyone who had performed with the original group in the ‘60’s; the club was packed way beyond the legal limit; and as the clock brought us the New Year the view from the stage was of a dozen or more folks who were old enough to have known better who had turned their tables into their own private dance floors. It remains one of the most raucous evenings the band ever experienced.
Speaking of raucous (just a measure or two from a ruckus) let’s turn the clock back now to the Holiday Season in 1967, when the group performed a six-night engagement at Chestnut Mountain Lodge, finishing on New Year’s Eve. It’s no surprise that this was a nonstop full house; between the local revelers, the out-of-town holiday crowd (arriving daily by bus and train), and a full contingent of hard-core Road Runner fans, walking around the room became a bit of a challenge for the SRO crowd.
The group performed for six nights, the stageful of equipment having been safely delivered by Jumpin’ Jack Haas and his ‘64 Impala. With Tim Hendrick off to the army, Kenny French was now full-time as bassist and vocalist. For the first time the group tried out what would become their new and final lineup: with Gary Goetz replacing Dick Grissinger on the drums and Jay Mason replacing Gary on lead Guitar and adding his vocals to the mix. The group began performing with this lineup within a few weeks and continued until the Road Runners rested with Joe’s departure for the USAF.
And . . . no one who was there, who also knew the names of the characters, could ever forget Ralph Basile offering award-worthy performances of “Go, go, go, Go Gorilla go now!”. What we wouldn’t give to have a recording of that in the Old Mogul Archives. 😎