For the 3 years we have been here, the only reaction to the fact that we have not yet been to the Iowa State fair, is one of shock.  Yes, I hear it is the biggest, best, and longest fair ever.  We almost made it last year, but didn’t.  This year, we were determined to.  Besides, Grampy had moved here last fall, and when I realized his birthday was opening weekend it sounded good.  I checked the concert schedule.  Peter Frampton was playing his birthday.  Ka-ching.  Present solved.

My dad loves guitar music like Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray.  Peter Frampton might have been just past his main music influence period, and just before mine, but we both loved the guys work.  So, we went to the fair.

We started off roaming aimlessly thorough the crowd.  It was packed.  We took Mason to a kid’s farm exhibit.  He took little seed tokens and planted them in dirt, then picked up baggies of corn and soy beans for the effort.  After that the later ‘fed’ them to the cow to make milk and or coverted them into bio-diesel to run the tractor to bring the rest of his acquired goods to a farmers market.  Here, the kids got to earn money to spend in the gift shop.  Passing the rocket pops and twinkies, Mason picked a loaf of bread!  He told me he wanted something healthy and that he remembered that he finished the bread that very morning.  What a smart little man!  It was such a cute activity for kids, and Mason loved it - especially since he was at the upper end of the suggested age range.  How come he won’t work that hard at our farm?

We purposefully avoided the midway area, but got to see many of the vegetable and animal exhibits.  This was still a state fair, and there were cattle, horses, pigs sheep and many other animals to show.  We saw minutes old chicks, day old piglets, week old cows, baby ostriches (and a full size one!), along with a full size elk, and the biggest bull and boar around.  WOW!  We even took in a cattle showing, as that barn had air-conditioning.
There was a building full of all the normal fair/show booths.  Sewing machines, hot tubs, pianos, siding, roofing and everything you could believe.  Outside had all the areas of tractors, farm gear and power tools.  We made a huge shopping list at the John Deere and Bobcat displays, and had to find the New Holland display that had the new 8N tractor, as Chuck Offenburger had pointed out earlier.  I would break our John Deere tradition for this retro-looking tractor.  It was very cool!  We took in pie from the Methodist church stand, and rested a little before hauling back to the grandstands for the concerts.

The Gin Blossoms were the opening act.  They put on a great show of all their hits.  I heard they broke up for a few years, and only had 2 newer songs that we didn’t know.  I wonder if they fell victim to the “the first album was so awesome, the 2nd album must be ever better” hype to failure situation so common in the music world.  Still, the music sounded great, and the lead singer kept running around the bleachers.
We actually had to explain to Mason the concept of an opening act.  He thought after this round of music that we could go home.  Nope!  We found a snack and tried to get Mason to watch the crew change the stage around.  This was his first concert after all.
Not many people could enter a stage with the Apocalypse Now - Flight of the Valkyries scene playing.  But Peter Frampton could.  “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”  I had mild expectations, as I heard his newer music and had seen a newer concert DVD showing that Peter had gone a bit softer, reflective perhaps, in his old age.  That his hard rock days were behind him as many other musicains had become.  NOPE!  For an old man, he could rock like no other.  There were no easy songs played here tonight.
Frampton came alive, with awesome covers of “Shotgun” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” before telling us that “We’re going to do you a little bit of everything tonight.  Maybe some juggling?  We’ll play some songs that have not even been recorded yet.  After that, we’ll play some songs just a bit older than that.  Then we’ll play some songs even older than those.  And we’ll play some really old songs.  So when you put it like that, it seems pretty good, huh?”

He dove into “Lines on my face”, “Show me the way” and “Baby I love your way”.  His ‘never been heard’ song, “Thank you Mr Churchill” which was the story of ending the war, bringing his dad home for a chance to meet his mom and making him…ROCKED.  It started off slow, but built into a frenzy that anyone near 60 shouldn’t be able to endure.  Then, a talk-box enhanced version of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” and a 15+ minute long, completely wicked-awesome rendition of “Do you feel like we do”

Not to sound cheesy, but it’s not like I would say that my life is more complete seeing Frampton play his signature song,  but it was something worth seeing during your lifetime.  I don’t think Reagan had any clue of what she was about to see besides this song, but shortly into the 2nd song of the night, she yelled at me that “Oh my God, this guy can play”  Reagan often hates my guitar driven rock, but she had a great time listening to many songs she didn’t even connect to Peter Frampton.  She had a great time.

The “Do you feel like we do” frenzy finally fell into that dim stage glow where you knew an encore was on the way.  I didn’t know what else to even expect, but he ended it with an awesome “While my guitar gently weeps”
The Iowa state fair had stated that there was a fireworks spectacular after every concert.  Let me tell you, there was.  It was one of the best fireworks shows I have ever seen, including Disney World.  The most interesting point of this was, that the stage was between the grandstands and the racetrack.  The backstage building was behind the racetrack, so that the artists had to cross the street, so to say, to reach the dressing rooms.  You could actually see Peter Frampton and his band stop in the middle of the race track and stare up for the entire fireworks show.  From our viewpoint, I could see Peter clap a few times when it ended.  He is human, just like the rest of us after all.