By Joe Guzman

Contributing Reporter

For those who find time in their busy school and work schedules to make it to a concert, the venue is important. Some enjoy the intimacy of a hole-in-the-wall bar while others favor a deafening performance alongside 20,000 screaming fans. It’s a case of different strokes for different folks, but one thing we all share is the anticipation of catching our favorite acts when they roll into town.

But with the rise of outdoor music festivals such as Lollapalooza in Chicago and Coachella in California, sometimes we are forced to leave our familiar digs in order to witness once-in-a-lifetime gigs. It is at these events that the venue, the artist and the performance drown under the weight of the full adventure.

During the spring of 1984, Oakland University senior nursing student David Wozniak was your average 21-year-old, only a couple years removed from high school and waiting on life.

In May of that year, six old high school buddies packed into Wozniak’s late ’70s green Dodge Dart to join 50,000 others in Kalamazoo for the “American Rock Festival,” a 24-hour straight showcase of continuous hair-metal glory. Ten bands in all, the lineup consisted of artists such as Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne, Quiet Riot and Mötley Crüe.

Life after high school found Wozniak’s group losing touch, and this was a chance to reconvene for a unique musical experience. But for Wozniak the trip wasn’t made for love of the music or any specific band; in fact he said he didn’t care for most of the performing acts.

“I was more of an R&B guy at that time,” Wozniak said.

It wasn’t the compilation of the day’s hottest acts nor was it the farm it was held at, it was the chance for this formerly close group of guys to re-connect.

“We weren’t there for any specific band,” Wozniak said. “We were just there for the experience.”

Leaving Detroit around 11:30 p.m. on a Friday, Wozniak remembers navigating the dirt roads of Kalamazoo between 3 and 4 a.m. On the way, people were parked and camped out, guiding the way for Wozniak and his friends.

“As we were driving people would flag us down … we would party on the side of the highway,” Wozniak said.

Eager to reach the venue in the blackness of the country with directions dependent on a friend’s memory, a distant bonfire was their glowing beacon marking the destination. The group eventually reached the outskirts of the farm where the festival was to take place, and with no hotels to stay at they parked and slept in the car.

The next morning Wozniak awoke to the smell of the extinguished bonfire and the sound of people making their way into the field. With morning hunger setting in, and the show scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., he was equipped with about 10 cases of Michelob but no

food.

“The smell of the air was a combination of bonfire smoke, hay and alcohol,” he said. “It was loud; at times we couldn’t even hear the bands because people were just doing their own thing.”

Someone they met during the show informed them of a McDonalds down the road, something he said he wished he would have known about before.

So, after drinking all morning and equipping themselves with arm bands, the group set out for some lunch.

One of the members convinced the “McWaiter” to fry them up some hash browns. The boys returned with the hash browns, fillet-o-fish and the most vivid memory of the trip.

Reminiscing about an event that brought together the year’s most electrifying musical acts, the performances were pushed into the background of Wozniak’s memory. He recalled only the fuzziest details of Ozzy addressing the crowd about biting off another bat’s head and White Snake ending the show at 11 a.m. the next morning.

What remained were vivid memories of the smells, sounds and bonding. Not what one would expect, but proof of an experience ingrained in Wozniak’s mind.

 “It was just the bonding; a bunch of us hadn’t seen each other in about a year,” he said. “So, on a bunch of different levels it was more the guys being together.”

Witnessing a days worth of the most popular music of the period would be a memory to last a lifetime. But after over 20 years, what stays with Wozniak was the bonding, the re-connecting of six high school friends before life happened.