whew, i can’t say what happened to september, but i finally have a few photos and clips of the great and free show at the grandstand at the IL state fair.

Bev wanted to see herman’s hermits and i figured, why not.  we didn’t have a plan, really, and were hot and tired by the time 7:00 rolled around, but we decided to walk to the grandstand and see what was what.

there wasn’t a huge crowd at first, and we found seats between the grandstand and the track.  pretty good seats!  we felt very young, because most of the audience was quite a bit older.  bev had listened to herman’s hermits when she was a little kid, but he was before my time.

they started performing when peter was only 15!  incredible, because now he’s 70, still getting up there and performing a great show.  his voice is still fantastic, he had lots of energy and was so funny and entertaining.

here’s where we sat for the first half hour.

this is a little part of the first song.  so good!

there were big screens on either side of the stage, which was nice for the people who were farther back, except the screen on one side was partially blocked by some big something.

at one point Peter mentioned that folks in illinois probably wanted to hear country music, and proceeded to sing johnny cash’s “ring of fire.”  he sounded just like him!

of course everybody had their phones out, recording and taking photos.

the show had started at 7:30 and by 8:00 i’d gotten a second wind.  down on the track there wasn’t such a huge crowd and i talked Bev into heading down there.  we managed to easily get about 20 feet from the stage, which was awesome.

this is the only good close-up i have, which is too bad because he was usually smiling.

he sang so many good songs, and then sang one where he inserted the words “illinois state fair” into the lyrics.  very clever, but i don’t know what the song was.

This is near the end of the show,  a bit of “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.”

Finally, his incredibly popular song “I’m Henry VIII, I Am.”  i haven’ been able to shake this ditty out of my brain ever since we saw the performance. there are worse things that could be stuck there, but i fear that it will never go away.

And this is so funny, here’s the band on the Ed Sullivan show, June 16th, 1965.  I’m sure that he had no idea he’d still be singing it 52 years later.

i am simply amazed by this man’s stamina.  what an entertaining end to our day at the fair!

i came home and told Kevin all about it, and it turns out that kevin is a big fan.  I immediately looked up shows online, and they were going to play at a place called the Indiana Grand Casino & Racetrack on Sept. 16th, our 11th anniversary.  Kevin thought it was a good idea that we take a drive to see them, so that’s just what we did.

eventually i’ll have a few videos up here about that experience; it was a memorable way to spend our anniversary, although the venue wasn’t as good as the big grandstand at the fair.

ok then,

mrs. approaching the end of september although right now it feels like the middle of sweltering august hughes.’