Growing Up Immortal
By Peter Diggins
We were so fortunate to have homes with supportive parents and basements and garages. They stayed with us even as the walls cracked from the feedback and sonic booms.
Rapid City was alive with bands of musicians. We’d go to the YMCA basement and witness among others, Moonfire with Steve Crowes and Les and Russ England and about eight Fender amps and people with incense and patchouli and lotus positions, while oil projections hovered and covered, and people liking our own band name Plastic Rat (Zappa) and that we jammed, and later Freeflite (Iron Butterfly) and that we flew…
...even as we sped and swayed through icy slush into the ditch with a road sign sliced through our windshield. We pulled the gear from the burning trailer and borrowed a U-Haul from a kid minding the gas station on a Sunday somewhere in Wyoming.
I'm grateful for the time traveling with the band in the wide open mountain west. Someone should tell those stories.