Follow Up

Yesterday I spoke about being at a hard rock show at the Upper Peninsula State Fair. Here's a little more.

You want to talk about a driving beat and harsh bass guitar licks? I was wearing a baseball cap during the performances, and the cap was vibrating on almost every song. Every time the drummer struck one of the 9,000 drums or cymbals on his set (when did rock music drum sets become so complicated?) or the bass player strummed a note, my cap literally vibrated along with it. 

Granted, we were pretty close to the stage (row 18 for what that's worth) and it was, at the risk of understatement, loud. But I never imagined a cap playing along to the beat.

I think my biggest fear, and me son Charlie expressed a similar concern afterwards, was whether my hearing would be affected. "ARE YOU HEARING OKAY, DAD?" he asked me as we got into the newer older van to go back to Hessel.

"YES, THE SHEARING WAS ALL RIGHT," I answered. 

No, it wasn't like that. We could each talk and hear normally, a fact that surprised the both of us.

Fuel For Thought

Me son Charlie and I were at the Upper Peninsula State Fair last Friday. We stayed long enough to hear the free rock concert that night, featuring Saliva and Fuel, two hard rock bands from about twenty five years ago who are still active.

I honestly enjoyed it. I will be the old man and say that Saliva's songs all kind of sounded the same to my ear. Hard rock and metal, while I like them well enough, both seem to hit me that way. You kids get off my lawn! 

But Fuel, who I had never heard of before last week, I liked quite a bit. They have their own distinct sound, at least in my mind. It helped that their various songs each sounded different, or different enough that I could tell them apart. I won't bore you with a set list (mostly because I have no idea of the song names) but during their encore they did a great hard rock cover of Hotel California. It was really, really good.

I might actually buy a couple of their albums. You know, be the old man in the alt rock section of the record store (vinyl is making a comeback you know) who gets made fun of behind his back by the half goth teen employees who take his money just the same.

28 minutes

We got back to the D yesterday after a weekend in Hessel, in Michigan's glorious upper Peninsula. It was a small and all too quick family get together. But I imagine all good times are too quick, eh?

Yet it could have been shorter. In this case the early arrivals up North, my eldest son, daughter-in-law, and myself went to the Upper Peninsula State Fair in Escanaba, three hours from Hessel in the western UP. We were on the road there about a half hour after I had gotten in this past Friday.  My daughter-in-law cracked wise to me as we started our journey to the Fair, "I hope you enjoyed your stay in Hessel!" 

Hey, 28 minutes in Hessel beats 28 minutes in a lot of other places, I responded quite truly.

The UP State fair was well worth the brief moments in Hessel. And we managed to stay a couple extra days after anyway.