The summer of 1977, I had just turned 19 and was a student at the Great Lakes Naval Training Command near Waukegan, Ill. My roommate and I went down to Soldiers Field to one of those multi-band concerts: REO, Ted Nugent, 38 Special, Lynyrd Skynyrd.
We were on the field, about three-quarter way back from the stage. Remember, in those days, there was little security. People came in with blankets, food, plastic milk jugs of water, cameras, etc. After baking in a long, hot, sunny Chicago day, the sun finally dipped below the rim of the field and Ted Nugent came on as the final act.
Suddenly someone threw some watermelon down from the stands behind us. The guy behind us threw it back up into the stands. This started a back-n-forth of stuff being thrown -- mostly the empty plastic milk jugs. Soon, more and more people got into the act of throwing jugs. This quickly evolved into the entire stadium throwing these jugs into the air and the entire Soldiers Field transformed into a giant air-popcorn machine. I was inside a popcorn machine listening to 10,000 watts of Ted Nugent! We were laughing so hard!!
So then Ted, seeing this, says something like, "Hey all you motherf*****s, throw those motherf*****g jugs up here!" Suddenly the popcorn turned into a rolling wave heading for the stage and in no time, the band was chest deep in plastic milk jugs. They stopped the show. The band left the stage. The roadies came out with push brooms which proved futile. But after several minutes, they pushed all the jugs off stage and into the pit between the stage and audience and the show resumed.
This is the only one of these Soldier Field concerts I went to that summer (or any other concert for that matter ever) where this happened. It's such a vivid memory I can see it to this day! Thanks for asking!
I was at a concert once, the arena sold whole pizzas. After about 10-20 minutes, there were 2 foot wide cardboard frisbees flying all over the place. Only saw this that one time.
BTW, my dad worked at Great Lakes NTC. My sister was born there.