This blog entry is a bit late in coming, but it seemed necessary to share my first 4th of July experience and all that it entailed. We decided we would travel back to Pennsylvania to see Kristen's family and because there was work to be done on the freezers at Jenis, I wouldn't have been able to work anyway. We had one of our more pleasant drives east this time, helped by stopping a couple of times; in Zanesville and in the PA state capital of Harrisburg. The trip was, though, even more exciting for the sighting of a black bear on the PA Turnpike. He seemed pretty unconcerned with the speeding traffic alongside him, as he just watched it go by and then scooted off into the woods.
Come the 4th of July, we decided that instead of heading downtown to the main Bethlehem fireworks display we we would drive over to see a more intimate display courtesy of friends of Kristen. PA law states that you are not allowed to launch fireworks that leave the ground and so all the fireworks we had the pleasure of seeing were "grounders". As much as the noise and colors they gave off was fun, even better was the introduction we were given to each by name, before they were lit. Examples included: Wrath Of The Beast, Moonlight Madness, Frog Prince (the one shaped like a frog's head in the picture above) and my personal fave, "One Unbelievable Fountain". The display was a fun time, enlivened by some sort of spinning effort that sent a few rockets towards the crowd of neighbors sat a good distance back on lawn chairs.
Another reason for heading back to PA was to get to see Dayton, Ohio's Guided by Voices... in Philadelphia. Around 10 years ago when I picked up a used copy of "Do the Collapse" in the Replay records in Bedminster I didn't really know what I was starting. I also didn't know that they were about to break up and stop playing together a couple of years later.... and then a few years later that Kristen and I would be living in Columbus, OH an hour or so away from Dayton. After gathering a mere fraction of their back catalogue I was pretty excited that they reformed a year or so ago and waited for them to come over to England. They never did, apparently Robert Pollard isn't too keen on flying. Finally they re-united and started playing shows a couple of years ago, and this year started in releasing new albums, two of three so far.... this year! There seemed no reason not to see them when they announced a summer tour, even if we couldn't make it to any of the three Ohio dates they were due to play.
Even with them playing a bunch of songs from the two of their three new albums, there was still plenty of room for them to play "the hits". Shocker in Gloomtown came early and made me very happy indeed. They came back two or three times, and played something over 40 songs which is certainly value for money. Even though he's pushing 55, Bob still busted out a good few high kicks (here at 1:33) and put away a fair amount of Miller Lite. One thing he couldn't keep up with though was Mitch Mitchell's cigarette smoking ability. I didn't try to keep count, but that he had a cigarette roadie to supply him between, and sometimes during, songs might give an idea of how many he got through! Hopefully it won't be another 10 years before we see them again.
No comments:
Post a Comment