Concerted Efforts Part 5: It Rhymes with Huge and Fairs Shine On

Golly, it has been a while since the last time I journeyed back into the ever dimming past to dredge up a heavily reedited concert memory for your reading pleasure!  Well, all I can say is thank you for your patience and I’ll be with you momentarily as I try to think of a topic.  Hmmmm…  Uh…no, not that…  Hm.  Waitasecond!  I believe I’ve struck some prose paydirt!  There is one type of concert experience of mine that I’ve yet to relay.  You know them, you love them, you’ve probably gotten drunk at one of them!  It’s time for the illustrious county fair concert!

Oh, yes and the time of year couldn’t be better as counties are fairing it up like crazy right now.  I’m incredibly apropos and practically sparkling with my timeliness on this one!  So, without further ado, or further adieu for my French/Belgian/Quebecistani readers, let us all head off to the county fair land of meth-soaked carnies, heavily fried dough assortments, watered down beer, and rides that are so safe, they didn’t even bother with inspections or regulations because those are for wussies!

Now for those of you unfamiliar with the idea of the county fair, I shall explain.  Since I’m from Wisconsin, I can’t help but be surrounded by farms.  Dozens of them daily, in fact.  And I can understand that given the nature of watching corn grow and cows flatulate, most farmers need a moment to blow off some steam.  That means that right around this time each year, the county puts on a fair.  There are rides and food and rigged midway games and tractor pulls and demolition derbies and livestock judging and baked good judging and fellow neighbor judging and so much more! 

Oh, and lest I forget…there’s beer.  Good heavens, there’s beer!  Pouring forth like a legendary land of plenty from days of yore and mine, releasing its bounty into the thirsty world!  It’s watered down, it’s overpriced, it’s dadblasted refreshing by the fifth one imbibed!  And the further afield you get from what passes as civilization in Wisconsin, the beer flow becomes a raging torrent, a flash flood, an overflowing estuary of drunken bliss!

As for me, all I want is a funnel cake and then go home.  But as that would make for a very short tale indeed, I’ll press on.

For years my lovely family has had a lovely vacation place in lovely Wautoma which is nestled right in lovely Waushara County in lovely Wisconsin.  Inevitably each year, my family would head off to the Waushara County Fair.  While it should have been somewhat fun, for me it was always sad.  The fair’s arrival meant that school was starting soon and summer was ending.  So I would be despondent when going to the fair, thinking that every dart I was futilely throwing at limp balloons to win a crappy 7 x 7 Def Leppard mirror was just delaying the inevitable: school was coming.  Worst of all, I wasn’t a big enough Def Leppard fan to keep on pathetically throwing unsharpened darts in this effort.  My heart just wasn’t in it.

Besides, let’s get to the music!  To start with, these first three acts I mostly remember, but I won’t dwell on them too much as I didn’t see too much of them.  You see, it isn’t like I wanted to see these folks perform.  I most assuredly didn’t, but as I was stuck with wherever my family wanted to go, I went.  This meant that despite my being a mostly well-behaved kid, I had to time my naughty implosions at just the right moment to get out of seeing the entire shows.  Yes, it was strategic misbehavior on my part.  I did anything to get my parents to eventually collapse and say, “Okay, that’s it!  We’re going back to the cabin.  Nope, we’re done, mister!  Let’s go!”  Hell, my dad probably provoked some fights between my brother and me, so he’d have an excuse to get out of stuff like this too.  Anyways…

The Memories (Saw 1 time)

The Memories are a group out of Wisconsin that did mostly harmless cover tunes and funny songs.  My brother and I got a cassette tape of theirs at the show that we didn’t ask for.  On the cover, you knew they rocked because one Memory had on a suitcoat with rolled up sleeves, another Memory was styling in his Members Only™ windbreaker.  I remember one guy looked like Martin Mull or perhaps even Martin Mull’s brother, whom I’ve never seen.  (Perhaps Martin Mull doesn’t even have a brother.  Yet if Martin Mull does have a brother, is his name also alliterative?  Like Mickey Mull or Maxwell Mull?  I should really check on this.) 

Anyway, with cover songs ranging from “Walk of Life” to “I Lobster but Never Flounder”, it was a many and varied performance that rocked about as hard as Donny & Marie covering a Sonny & Cher song on The Captain & Tennille’s variety show.  Believe it or not, the Memories still exist (!) and still tour (?!), so all the best to them!  Thanks for ditching the rolled suit sleeves!

Mel McDaniel (Saw 1 time)

Mel McDaniel was a different cat.  A country cat.  He even had a tour bus which was parked and everything!  Supposedly he was a big deal, so big that I couldn’t name a single tune he did, but gosh, for Waushara County, he was big!  (Then again, when Wautoma got a Subway restaurant, that was even bigger than Mel McDaniel!)  To be fair, I was never the biggest country fan, and my ignorance of McDaniel’s catalog has remained constant in the intervening years.  But I sure remember that sweet tour bus!  (Mel McDaniel…Martin Mull…you know, I’ve never seen these two guys in the same place at the same time!  Of course, McDaniel died over a decade ago, but still, no matter how much I keep trying, this alliteration just isn’t that interesting.)

The Kids from Wisconsin (Saw 1 time)

Remember how the Super Bowl used to have college marching bands or Up with People do the halftime show and nowadays people find that kinda quaint or lame or both?  Well, let me introduce you all to the Kids from Wisconsin!  When you can’t get anyone else to entertain for your county fair, when there aren’t enough tractors for the tractor pull, when your fair has been given a court order to have the most inoffensive act possible for your fairgoers, you call the Kids from Wisconsin!

Picture the swing choir from your high school, add even more aggressive perkiness, throw in some sparkly outfits, and cue up a song list that even the Amish would find inoffensive and voilà, you get the Kids from Wisconsin.  Yeah, I’ve found that if given a choice between seeing an empty stage or seeing the Kids from Wisconsin, the empty stage wins hands down.  This group always struck me as being too culty, too much children of the Stepford Wives-y, too forcibly eager in their insincerity.  Like if you had a dancing showtune act that was staffed by First Ladies, insurance salesmen, and secondhand car dealers. 

If you see the Kids from Wisconsin, do the honorable thing and don’t.  Instead, turn around, fill up on four 32 oz cups of Milwaukee’s Best beer, slam down five corn dogs and three pounds of cotton candy, ride the tilt-a-whirl for an hour, then get a biker to punch you in the breadbasket.  Yes, it’ll be messy, but it would be faaaaaaar better than trying to hold back your stomach contents after hearing the Kids from Wisconsin warble through “My Heart Will Go On”, “We Are Family”, and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie”.  Come to think of it, I’m feeling a bit nauseous myself, so I’m going to move on along now…

     

The Nixons/Brother Cane (Saw 1 Time)

Ah, we’ve accelerated to high school for this one.  I never thought I would experience any other county’s county fair, but when the time came to attend the Fond du Lac County Fair in Fond du Lac, WI, I was ecstatic!  For you see, the Fond du Lac County Fair organizers had decided that they were going to have a family night.  They even set up some parameters that in their eyes would guarantee family fun! 

The first parameter was that they booked some “modern” bands to be a touch more relevant with the younger folks.  Unfortunately, they went with two bands that skewed more towards the teenaged, disaffected youth market instead of humdrum family fare.  While the Nixons and Brother Cane had some minor chart success, they were still alt-rock on the fringe of the dying grunge movement.  Whilst I can appreciate the effort in trying something different, neither group is really going for the family-centric demographic the fair organizers were trying to attract.  So, that’s a strike one called.

The next parameter was that since this was to be a family night, the bands were prohibited from using foul language and if they had a dirty song or two, they should just leave them right out of the setlist.  Given the natural rebellion of grunge, I’m sure this would go over well.  Again, the best of intentions, but I must ask, which parent is going to get their seven-year-old to the fair to see Brother Cane?  As an attendee, I can answer that question for you: no parent brought little kids to this.  Who would show up?  Why none other than the last vestiges of the flannel wearing, headbanging hordes would be in attendance, hoping for an impromptu mosh pit that was never going to come.  So, there’s strike two.

The final parameter: in order to make it a more family-friendly atmosphere, attracting only the bestest members of the Fond du Lac County citizenry, the organizers said that there would be absolutely no alcohol served that night and also no outside alcohol would be allowed into the fairgrounds.  Yes.  No alcohol.  In Wisconsin.  Yeah.  That’s like saying there wouldn’t be any corn at a county fair in Iowa or that delicatessens were banned in New York or that taking a public dump on a city street was prohibited in San Francisco.  You can imagine the reaction!  And with that, we now have our strike three, ladies and gentlemen!

Being classified as teenage-y and angst ridden, several friends and I decided to go to the fair.  The tickets were cheap and even though we were too young for beer but too old for family night, we descended on the fairgrounds.  As we got closer to showtime, we waited up in the grandstand.  The Nixons were up first, opening for Brother Cane.  As you probably don’t recall since most don’t either, the Nixons had a minor hit with “Sister”.  Beyond that, I didn’t really know anything else from their catalog.

The Nixons plowed through a song and then their lead singer warmly welcomed everybody to the Fond du Lac County Fair Family Night.  He then went on to say that no one should be using words like “sh*t” and “f*ck” and a litany of other similar words with strategically placed asterisks because it was “f*cking family night” so everyone had to be on their best behavior tonight.

After this was said, there was a pregnant pause and before you knew it, the Nixons had vanished quicker than Amelia Earhart giving Jimmy Hoffa a flying lesson.  The Nixons’ banner behind the stage was quickly replaced with a Brother Cane one.  Brother Cane then took the stage and started playing as if the intent all along was for the Nixons to open with only one song and then abruptly skate off.  Even with Brother Cane distracting us by playing their biggest hit “And Fools Shine On” (as featured in the legendary Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers!), we still were a mite confused as to what happened to the Nixons. 

Well, it turns out that when the band was told the parameters from the organizers, the Nixons decided to go out in a blaze of glory, making a statement that listed all the words that they were prohibited from using, ostensibly with other words helpfully added for good measure.  Predictably, this simply shocked the hundreds of absent six-year-olds and their not-present families but delighted the Gen Xers like me who were the only ones in attendance.  The organizers then swooped in, kicked the Nixons off the stage for their daring transgression, and got the show moving with the headliner, Brother Cane.  Presumably the Nixons were simply heartbroken that they couldn’t play, shrugged their shoulders, got some cotton candy at the fair, rode the Ferris wheel, and later were pardoned by Gerald Ford.

And the mighty Fond du Lac County Fair strode the earth, fully confident in its supreme unquestioned power.  They would be the upholders of purity and truth!  But that leads to my having a question for the esteemed Fond du Lac County Fair folks…

Ted Nugent (Saw 1 Time)

Why then would you later book a guy who has a song called “Wang Dang, Sweet Poontang”?!  (Don’t get me wrong; the song is a hoot whenever I have an immature itch to scratch, but really?  Nugent?)  I guess the arbiters of what constitutes family fare had all retired or stormed off to join the Nixons in protest. 

Speaking of the Nugent, some years prior to this show, I had found myself in Jackson, MI.  I sought out Ted’s hunting/fishing/rocking store that he owned in the area.  Aside from the huge array of hunting and fishing gear, there were also stacks of Nugent’s jerky, all of which claimed on the label that he test rides all the meat.  Truth be told, it tasted excellent, some of the best jerky I’ve ever had, and I should know because I’ve eaten jerky before.  Sadly, Ted wasn’t behind the counter that day, but I did buy a keychain and an autographed photo, content with the memories and the delicious jerky!

Then time passed and I finally saw Ted Nugent live at the esteemed Fond du Lac County Fair.  This time the fair had given up on any pretense of a family night and stuck The Nuge onstage for all to see.  And since the shackles of a family night were broken, it was a real humdinger of a show what with everyone swearing like crazy and imbibing beer that flowed like wine would flow if wine were beer.  What a hedonistic bacchanal of rock!

Well…not really.  But Ted was in fine form for the show though, all the while shooting arrows at blazing targets, whilst being incredibly loud and rocking.  Even my friend, a soul with whom I had previously seen AC/DC, was taken aback with how loud Nugent was in comparison.  Or least that’s I what I think he said as my lipreading talents never fully evolved.

With “Free for All” and “Cat Scratch Fever” still ringing in my ears, clutching a nifty new Ted Nugent baseball cap that said “NUGE” in the front and “Rhymes with Huge” on the back, I then departed the Fond du Lac County Fair.  The concert gave me a lot to think about, namely how was I ever going to wear a hat like this in public, like at my wedding for instance.  And that ladies and gentlemen and ladies, was the last show I ever saw at a county fair to date.  And I never did get that funnel cake.

But all that jibber jabber notwithstanding, this talk about county fairs has got me hankering to eat some overpriced deep-fried chocolate covered pickles wrapped in bacon and peanut butter, while trying to cut in line for the tilt-a-whirl that is more aerodynamic due to the inclusion of the huge innovative rust holes, all the while trying to drink a watery beer that has more head than a nonagenarian billionaire. 

Anyway, what time do the Spin Doctors with special guest Tom Cochrane take the stage again?  C’mon everybody!  After watching that demo derby, “Life is a Highway” indeed!  Am I right? Hooray for the fair!