August 23rd 1998

 

This reunion came at the request of Wour 96.9 DJ Jerry “The Doctor” Krause. It was to be the 25th anniversary of the Utica station and Jerry wanted an Alecstar reunion to be part of it. The celebration was to be held at the Vernon Downs Racetrack. For the previous nine years Wour had been holding their annual “Fireworks Over Central New York” shows at the track. The anniversary show was to be the tenth and as it turned out, last show at the racetrack. Jerry contacted Jack Murray to persuade the band to reunite. A month had gone by and no commitment had come from the band. In fact, only two of the five band member’s were even aware of the offer. It wasn’t until Jack decided to call the person he knew would take the idea and and make it happen. Jack made the right choice because within three days of him making the call, the band agreed to play the show. Promoted by Chuck Chao, the show had Paul Rodgers (lead singer of Free and Bad Company as the headliner. Also on the bill were eighties hard rockers Night Ranger and The Tubes. It was partly cloudy afternoon and 22,000 people came through the gates. The bands set was supposed to be 50 minutes but ended up being only 35, mostly due to an over zealous stage manager that worked for the company that provided the PA equipment for day. The crowds reaction to the first public Alecstar show in over 13 years was nothing short of phenomenal . It was though every one of the 22,000 people had come to see Alecstar. The band played as though the last gig was the previous weekend and not in 1985. The chemistry and more importantly, the magic was still quite evident in the bands performance. The time went way to fast and in fact the band was not going to be allowed to do an encore until Jerry Krause talked to the stage manager (the same guy) and told him that he wanted Alecstar to do one. After all it was WOUR’s show. He relented and the band returned and closed the show with “Hollywood”. After it was over everybody agreed that they wanted to do it again, but it would be nearly five years before the next reunion came to pass.

 

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