WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY ALUMNI MAGAZINE
Spring 2009

Found Stories

BY MOLLY WALSH
Bob Freeman
Bob Freeman — rocking.

Bob Freeman, on bass, rocks out at an impromptu concert on the Sigma Phi Epsilon porch one Friday afternoon, as captured in the 1976 Parnassus.

The band he played with, Storm — along with several other local groups — was an integral part of the late ’70s campus lifestyle.

Storm played homecoming dances and fraternity and sorority functions, including parking lot parties, which enticed hundreds of raucous students to come together for a good time.

“If you want to talk about good parties, those were good parties,“ says Arthur Glass, a former Storm member who today lives in Overland Park, Kan. “They were like little mini-Woodstocks.”

Glass and Allen Banta founded the versatile group in 1972 when they were still in junior high school. 

From its humble beginning in Banta’s basement, the band learned many of the styles of the day — rock, disco, funk, even country. The group was one of the few local bands with a full horn section.

Storm members, who played together until 1981, met up in spring 2007 for a reunion concert that drew 300 people. “We bonded as a group through our experience in the band, but also as students at the university,” Glass says. “And those bonds last to today.”

 


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Found Stories

Bob Freeman, on bass, rocks out at an impromptu concert on the Sigma Phi Epsilon porch one Friday afternoon, as captured in the 1976 Parnassus.