Welcome back to Bud and Jeff’s adventures at Illinois State University’s “Rites of Spring” concert in 1977. Bud’s temptations are just beginning, but for a while there all I needed was beer to keep me in college.
A little trivia for you. This is the line up for the final Rites of Spring in 1977.
Rites of Spring VI
Saturday, April 30, 1977
Bonnie Koloc
The Undisputed Truth
REO Speedwagon
Charlie Daniels Band
In the final panel, yes there’s a guy takin’ a whiz on the bushes. One of the major things that got the Rites of Spring concerts canceled after 1977 was the fact that there were so many of us rabid beer drinkers and too few Porta Potties. So, those of who could, we did our business in the bushes. So, the final panel is my little nod to one of the many activities that got the concerts canceled after 1977. It was a good year…
Occupied! Take a number!
In honor of Bud thinking about staying up All Night Long doing a term paper, here’s a little Joe Walsh to start your week off with! You can’t go wrong with some rockin’ Joe Walsh anytime of the day or night!
FRISBEEEEEEES!!! Ah, those were the days 🙂
Haven’t forgot to donate BTW – just waiting to 1) get paid this week and 2) connect with plastic-bearing facilitator…
I majored in Frisbee. Still damn good at it today. Now that I have an official Frisbee dog, I’m in 7th heaven!
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Now all you need is to become so successful that your old university will award you an honorary doctorate in Frisbee 🙂
Your work in the first 3 panels is magnificent! I love the way you addressed the background. 1977 was a great time, and I appreciate your tribute. Keep up the great work, as it does not fall on deaf ears. 🙂
Thank you Susan! And I love your HR Puffnstuf avatar! Talk about a show that was influenced by drugs… man, that show was pure high.
The great thing about the new format is it allows me the time to work on panels like the first three. In the old 3-day a week format, that would have been a simple background. Now that I have the time, I am putting more into the comic including the backgrounds!
So, I’m glad you noticed! 🙂
Love the background too….but does everyone at that school wear the same gray shirt..haha
And, they all have brown hair. 🙂
No, I did that on purpose as originally I had everyone with different color shirts, pants and hair and, even with the blur, it was very distracting. Not that Bud is all that exciting, I wanted to keep the reader’s eyes in the foreground and just “glance” at the background.
You are welcome. I have been a fan of 1977 for over a year now and decided to drop you a line. I loved H. R. Pufnstuf! Sid and Marty Krofft were awesome; moreover, you can bet they were stuffin’ and puffin’ something. Billie Hayes was psychedelically phenomenal as Witchiepoo! I have always coveted her Vroom Broom. Maybe one day I will find a great ride like that!
I didn’t go to college, but even if I did, I wouldn’t remember it.
hmm…maybe I did go…there’s a large portion of “blank” space from age 19 to around 34.
There are a few weekends from 1977 I truly have “lost” and I’m sure a few other days as well. There was this one weekend where we played a small festival in a local college parking lot and honestly, I don’t remember a damn thing. I hope I remembered to go on stage that night…
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Well, besides the over-abundance of females, alcohol was one of my main reason s for going to college. 🙂
Byron, the comics are looking outstanding, I’ve just gotta tell ya.
Women go without saying…. the booze just helps tolerate them!
Thanks for the compliment George. it means a lot to me. I have been trying to improve and I think I’m making ground.
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Alcohol was one of the main reasons it took me 7 years to finish a 4 year degree. 🙂
That and pot…. 😛
Man, I’ll have to 2nd both George & tmcelmurry – sounds like you guys could’ve been classmates – hell, roomates… In fact, Byron, you sure you didn’t get that picture from some UNM archive?
LOL! I know, many a college weekend festival I’m sure looked very similar!
I hope the kids today enjoy college as much as we did. It was a very different times back then… very open and folks just seemed to get along better…. or it was the booze and post hazing it all together.
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I should have done more drinking in college. If I had realized the post-graduation job market was going to be so awful I would have just said, “Hell with it” and drunk myself into oblivion.
Post-graduation job markets always suck. So, yeah, I got my binge drinking days out of the way early on. Now I just draw a comic to beat my brain into oblivion…
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lookin great Byron! nice touch with the background blur, works well with your style.
#thanksdawn….
At least I’m *doing* backgrounds now. I use to dread doing backgrounds as it drug out the time it took to do the old format comics, and as you know, doing three of those a week is challenging with family/work, etc.
I know I’d love to do two pages a week, but right now there just isn’t enough time. Sigh…
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What *is* that thing that he’s poking at in panel 6?! I’ve heard legends about a device that pounded ink onto paper in the shape of letters, but never thought that such a thing actually existed. (Just kidding! I know what a typewriter is. It looks like he’s using an IBM Selectric. [My mom used those at a lot of her jobs.] I’m guessing that he’s at the Library’s Typing Room.)
Well, an IBM electric typewriter was like owning a house back in the day. They were expensive! I’m sure Bud has borrowed it or using his Mom’s typewriter. The Libraries had typing rooms? Really? I don’t remember that, but then the Library did not serve beer, so I wasn’t in it much.
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When I was in college between 1986-1990-ish, i was one of the first people with a computer AND a printer in the dorm (we didn’r fave frats or sororities). It was a 16-color IBM compatable with a wopping 10 meg hard drive my dad bought for $2000. Some other lucky people had those new word processor typewriters that had an 80-160 character screen. If I had 2-grand now, i’d have a bitchen computer or two.
Oh, my wifes fave activity in college was breaking empty beer bottles against the Science buildy, which was next to our dorm (small college on the south side of Indianapolis).
BUILDING not buildy – sooooory.
PS: she did that because she was upset with her then-current boyfriend. I guess I sounded better that borken glss (I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass by Nick Lowe 1978)
Or *broken* glass too…. 🙂
Man, I was in college in the “dark ages” where a kid (me) with an electric typewriter was the hit of the dorm. But there’s something about having learned typing on an actual typewriter. Especially those manual jobs where you had to pound down the keys with a freakin’ hammer practically.
In a way, computers have made it too easy and learning good keyboarding is hard to do on these cheesy plastic pieces of crap they call keyboards now.
Throwing empty beer bottles at buildings, hmmmm… I’d make sure the house now has only *plastic* bottles. Just to be safe…
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I appologize for my spelling, i’m at home recovering from the flu. The replacement keyboard for my 1st computer was $200 though. Today that’s 1/2 of what it costs me to make a new computer. I do like my Microsoft 3000 wireless kb/mouse combo!
Hey, I hope you didn’t take it wrong… damn, I mis-spell stuff all the time. So I was just having a little fun!
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no offeb=nce taken – i missmell all thr tine
Sorry for the late heads up but there is voting for web comic of the year and you could make it more interesting if you get you fans to vote for you web comic. There is a tuggle war between Wayrift and Eben 07. You have plenty of fans so they should represent. If you want to… that is.
The obvious Jeff is from a rich family why isn’t he in Harvard or Yale then again he didn’t go to Westerburg High school. Here he could became a Heather providing he kissed a mystic frog oh the fun of being a Heather playing croquet and looking like Shannon Dohery. Saying if one is the head Heather “Veronica do make me a bloody Ceasar and do make it fabulous.” In both the movie and musical seen both who is Heather Chandler even dressed as a Heather but it hurts getting hit in the nose with a croquet ball. So I say at the risk of getting accidentally poisoned “Jeffa make a bloody Ceasar and do make it fabulous” oh being a Heather is so much fun short skirts and Mary Janes . But since Buds in college instead of high school the he could turn into Buddet and become a majorette love those sexy costumes. If not he could be a beatnik chick like in P.J. O Roaukes college days writes for Rolling Stone and the books like Parliament of Whores. If it is like Animal house saw the movie “Toga toga” think phone both stuffing, gold fish swallowing (poor little fish), hula hoops, tricycle races, being paddled by upper classmen ow, keggers. Then toga parties “Hale party Ceasar Americanium” with Drug Clark and his Hot nuts singing he’s got the whole world by it’s balls naked and hunkering squatting on the balls of ones foot. Oh to be young and in college but I wasn’t Shannon Dohery nor had a romance with Christian Slater. Just like Animal house if you visit the frat/sorority I’ll give a bottle of Jack Danials to Bud and Jeff maybe they will lose their manhood and become cute little pom pom girls.
I used to follow PJ O’Rourke’s works in National Lampoon in the 1970s. When he started leaning toward political musings, I didn’t follow along. O’Rourke was a great writer and I just found out he passed away in February of this year! I missed that completely.
The movie “Animal House” was released in the summer of ’78, so when I returned to college for my senior year at Illinois State University, I was completely absorbed by the film’s antics and life style. I drank heavily on the weekends much like the guys in the film. Bud’s shirt design is based on baseball shirt that Lampoon sold back in ’78.
Oh I missed the courses Bud and Jeff could take nude underwater basket weaving in a tank with live lobsters feel the pinch. Other than a crash helmets nude cactus upholstery riding unicycles. Playing nude tiddlywinks with blasting caps while flatulent pyroflatulence, juggling obsidian knives while skateboarding naked saying I’m evil. More serious courses mambo dancing Marxism and tap dancing fascism. I had an alt right conservative room mate he call me a libtard or said good lord when he saw my little pink dress when he wasn’t stepping on my quote little girly feet. So I called him a tap dancing Nazi and was not even a good tap dancer he would say to me “You women folk need us men folk for protection”.