Well since we were just talking in the last blog entry about me cooking my sunglasses at 400 degrees for 15 minutes in the summer of 2008, let's move on chronologically to a couple of weeks later. It was the weekend of 7/25-7/27/08 and my favorite band the Radiators were promising to cook our brains at 100+ degrees for hours on end each night. The schedule called for the Rads to play Friday night at the 'Stones Throw' bar in Eau Claire, WI. On Saturday night they moved down the freeway to the 'Miramar Theatre' in Milwaukee, WI. Then on Sunday they would wind up the “I-94 Tour” at the 'Taste Of Lincoln Avenue' in Chicago, IL.
They came out of the gates strong in Eau Claire with "Law Of The Fish", and then kept hammering us for 2 ½ hours of sweaty fun with tons of favorites including the whole "Love Is A Tangle/Jessica/Lonesome Whistle/Chevy '39" medley before closing the show with my all-time favorite Rads jam - the full "Hardcore" medley. Speaking of getting hammered, my wife Nadia and I had arrived in Eau Claire from Minneapolis at 2:00 pm and the show did not start until 10:30 pm so we were pretty loose after 8 ½ hours of heavy drinking with all of our friends. I remember the show well though and they cooked that little place. It was a small stage with Reggie the bass player tucked back next to Frankie the drummer and they rocked it. All of the usual Minneapolis folks were there including Mitch and Kara Manson, Ted and Polly Booker, Mike and Allison Spicoli, Bonnie & Clyde, Tommy the Freak, Fred Wong, Robin Miller...and the extremely hot/extremely cool Nancy Osbourne from Wausau, WI.
Nancy had kicked off the party with us in the hotel bar when we first arrived and we just kept going strong from there...right through the afternoon in the hotel, the pre-concert catered birthday celebration for Mike Spicoli at the Stones Throw, the concert, and the post-concert hotel-room party till sun-up. Somehow Nadia and I managed to get dressed and stumble down to the hotel bar in the morning and had breakfast with the Radiator's manager Joey Abelson. Then we wearily got in the car to make the 4 hour drive down to Milwaukee. When we got to the on-ramps for I-94 we looked at each other with raised eyebrows...should we bag the Milwaukee show? Take the I-94 West ramp and just go home and go to bed? No way! But it would feel so good...should we? Could we? We could...no, no we couldn't. We took the I-94 East ramp and forged ahead.
We made the right decision of course as the Radiators put on a great show in Milwaukee in the hot little Miramar Theatre. Most of the Minneapolis crew did not make the trek down, so we met up with our Milwaukee crew consisting of Mike Murphy, Giggling Joe, Baby-doll Steve and their three wives, as well as Special Kaye and Travelin' Dave.
They came out of the gates strong in Eau Claire with "Law Of The Fish", and then kept hammering us for 2 ½ hours of sweaty fun with tons of favorites including the whole "Love Is A Tangle/Jessica/Lonesome Whistle/Chevy '39" medley before closing the show with my all-time favorite Rads jam - the full "Hardcore" medley. Speaking of getting hammered, my wife Nadia and I had arrived in Eau Claire from Minneapolis at 2:00 pm and the show did not start until 10:30 pm so we were pretty loose after 8 ½ hours of heavy drinking with all of our friends. I remember the show well though and they cooked that little place. It was a small stage with Reggie the bass player tucked back next to Frankie the drummer and they rocked it. All of the usual Minneapolis folks were there including Mitch and Kara Manson, Ted and Polly Booker, Mike and Allison Spicoli, Bonnie & Clyde, Tommy the Freak, Fred Wong, Robin Miller...and the extremely hot/extremely cool Nancy Osbourne from Wausau, WI.
Nancy had kicked off the party with us in the hotel bar when we first arrived and we just kept going strong from there...right through the afternoon in the hotel, the pre-concert catered birthday celebration for Mike Spicoli at the Stones Throw, the concert, and the post-concert hotel-room party till sun-up. Somehow Nadia and I managed to get dressed and stumble down to the hotel bar in the morning and had breakfast with the Radiator's manager Joey Abelson. Then we wearily got in the car to make the 4 hour drive down to Milwaukee. When we got to the on-ramps for I-94 we looked at each other with raised eyebrows...should we bag the Milwaukee show? Take the I-94 West ramp and just go home and go to bed? No way! But it would feel so good...should we? Could we? We could...no, no we couldn't. We took the I-94 East ramp and forged ahead.
We made the right decision of course as the Radiators put on a great show in Milwaukee in the hot little Miramar Theatre. Most of the Minneapolis crew did not make the trek down, so we met up with our Milwaukee crew consisting of Mike Murphy, Giggling Joe, Baby-doll Steve and their three wives, as well as Special Kaye and Travelin' Dave.
(Quick side note on how Baby-doll Steve got his name. I dubbed him that after hearing the story about the time him and his wife were hosting a party. Steve heard his baby crying so he went back to the bedroom to soothe the child. He brought the baby cradled in his arms out to the living room where the rest of the grownups were hanging out, but as he entered the room he promptly tripped and pitched the kid headfirst into the corner of the coffee table. Except that it was just a baby-doll, not the real thing. Gasps and screams were let out until it was apparent that Steve had brought out a baby-doll instead of his baby. The men all laughed, but for some reason the women did not think it was at all funny.)
Anyways, we all had a blast hanging out and dancing to more extreme Radiation. Fittingly, the Rads opened with "Long Hard Journey Home" and then played a bunch of favorites including a killer "Solitary Man" before encoring with a crazy "Evil/Spoonful" jam. We had to miss the Sunday Chicago show for work reasons, but that was okay with us as the two late nights were already going to make for a long, tough ride back home to Minneapolis.
On the way back we needed a snack so we pulled over in Foster, WI at the 'Foster Cheese House' and bought a couple of ice cream cones and a bag of cheese curds from an absolutely enormous pair of women working behind the counter. There are only 2 things of note in Foster besides these two humongous ladies...the cheese house that surrounds their 400 lb frames and the gas station next to it. According to Wikipedia, the population is 95 with 1.3 people per square mile. One would think there is not much happening in Foster, but one would be wrong. When we went back outside we heard all this commotion just down the road about a quarter mile so we drove over to see what was going on.
On the way back we needed a snack so we pulled over in Foster, WI at the 'Foster Cheese House' and bought a couple of ice cream cones and a bag of cheese curds from an absolutely enormous pair of women working behind the counter. There are only 2 things of note in Foster besides these two humongous ladies...the cheese house that surrounds their 400 lb frames and the gas station next to it. According to Wikipedia, the population is 95 with 1.3 people per square mile. One would think there is not much happening in Foster, but one would be wrong. When we went back outside we heard all this commotion just down the road about a quarter mile so we drove over to see what was going on.
What was going on though was not readily apparent. There were a bunch of weird machines cruising around making an extraordinary amount of noise, but what where they? Strange little cars? Four-wheelers? No, wait...are those lawnmowers?? Yep, but they were not mowing grass. They were drag racing and it looked like at least half the population of Foster was in attendance. There were whole families with coolers of beers sitting on their blankets, hanging in the beer tent, or watching from the bleachers. They had a rickety old wooden sun-faded bleacher set up for fans to sit in next to this short 100 yard-long dead-end street. It was the goofiest thing I had ever seen so we had to get out of the car and check it out.
We parked on a side street about 50 feet from the finish line and were about to cross the main street but we noticed they had set up a 20-foot long string barrier with a sign on one end that said: "Entrance fee - $4.00". Entrance fee? Really? Entrance to what, the other side of the road? So we just stood there on our side of the street and waited for the next race. There was a guy in an "Events Staff" t-shirt with a green flag and a red flag and he stood at the finish line and suddenly waved his flags like crazy. Then two insanely loud lawn mowers with huge 8-cylinder engines and five-foot long exhaust pipes came flying down the street while all the drunk Fosteronians cheered madly. After they crossed the finish line the flag-guy furiously waved his flags again while everyone went nuts.
We decided to take a couple pictures of the next race and then take off, but one of the racers must have been perturbed that we were on the wrong side of the street taking pictures. After crossing the finish line he didn't slow down but instead came barreling right at us. I had just snapped a picture and was still looking through the viewfinder when I realized he was coming for us. We both jumped out of the way behind our car just before he turned away at the last second. I thought he was going to kill us with that maniacal look on his face as he was bearing down on us with his foot-long beard flapping in the wind. We decided it was time to get the hell out of there and head home. Apparently another typical summer Sunday afternoon in Foster, WI, but we'd had enough.
The picture above is from that day in Foster. Note the flag guy with his "Event Staff" t-shirt, the people hanging out, and the old bleachers that are about to cave in. The lawn mower crossing the finish line is the guy who's attempt at vehicular manslaughter scared the crap out of us. I can only assume that he was annoyed that we had not contributed to the entrance fee, which I am sure came directly out of his beer fund. I wish I had gotten a picture of the ‘entrance gate’, which is just to the right of this picture. It was a folding card table with the back of a beer case taped to it that said: "Entrance fee - $4.00". You got to love small-town life, making the most out of what you got.
The picture above is from that day in Foster. Note the flag guy with his "Event Staff" t-shirt, the people hanging out, and the old bleachers that are about to cave in. The lawn mower crossing the finish line is the guy who's attempt at vehicular manslaughter scared the crap out of us. I can only assume that he was annoyed that we had not contributed to the entrance fee, which I am sure came directly out of his beer fund. I wish I had gotten a picture of the ‘entrance gate’, which is just to the right of this picture. It was a folding card table with the back of a beer case taped to it that said: "Entrance fee - $4.00". You got to love small-town life, making the most out of what you got.
Awesome story, as usual!
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