Seriously though it's great being back I guess. My friends have changed but I guess I have as well.
My friend Rick and I went to see Heart/Journey at the Iowa State Fair and I kid you not I actually enjoyed myself. I never saw myself as actually liking Heart but damn if they didn't just rock the fuck out. I mean I know they're mostly just pumping out a formula but I'm finally starting to learn that sometimes that can be ok and I can just shut up and enjoy something that everybody else likes. Plus they played Magic Man, Barracuda and Crazy on You, how could I have not enjoyed myself.
Journey was basically just karaoke, they've got this new lead singer who sounds like Steve Perry but doesn't have any of the charm, and it just felt fake, not that the audience seemed to care. More often than not they would drown him out.
I will give Journey some credit though, they have the all the cliches of a 70's/80's stadium rock band down pat. At all the right moments the lead singer climbed on top of a speaker/the drum stand and jumped down exactly when he was supposed to and he never hesitated to point at the audience and encourage them to clap by mimicking the motions with his hands. On level it was some kind of bizarre performance art because it did seem so constructed but really it was just midwesterific. Ultimately I was happy enough to say that now I have seen Journey and no one can force me to see them again.
I had plenty of state fair food but it wasn't as exciting as I had hoped. Sure they had all the usual suspects: corndogs, pork chops on a stick; fried snickers; fried oreos; continuously peeled potatoes covered in nacho chees as well as some foods that I wasn't expecting, such as the pickle dawg, a truly delightful concoction consisting of a pickle slathered in cream cheese or wrapped in either pastrami or ham. It was all delicious and incredibly heart stoppingly unhealthy but it wasn't the chocolate covered bacon or beer on a stick that I had hoped for. Rick and I were there on the last day of the fair so that might have affected it somewhat. We missed out on a lot of the quintessentially Iowan stuff that you only find at the state fair but we did find free parking and discounted tickets so that was a win.
I have homework to do, which is kind of an alien concept. I turned in a paper the other day that I might have to apologize for later on. Oh well.
Anyway, just got invited to a bluegrass jam that happens weekly so I'm excited about that.
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I love Heart and would love to see them. But Journey, I think I could pass.
ReplyDeleteThey were actually hilariously terrible at times, but mostly I just spent the entire concert desperately trying to make sure that if Rick's car got towed that we could find someone in Grinnell to give us a ride. Luckily we weren't towed.
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