Come sail away

Sometime around February my friend Jason called and asked if I had plans for the 4th of July. Being someone who only plans their life a week or so at a time, of course I didn't. So he excitedly told me that Styx would be performing in Logan on the 4th of July, and he wanted me to come.

Now, while some other people's parents raised them listening to bands like Styx, Poison, Journey, REO Speedwagon and the like, my parents were busy raising me on James Taylor, John Denver, and the Carpenters. My mom was raised in Soda Springs, Idaho and my dad was a choir geek, so frankly I didn't have a chance. But, notwithstanding my big hair band ignorance, I told him to get me a ticket.

Jason requested that we dress up for the affair. I forgot that request until I got to Logan and found Jason in cut-off black jeans and a hideous tie-dyed shirt, with his hair all skewampus and lines etched into the side of his head. I felt bad that he was so committed and I had come unprepared, so I borrowed a bandana and pulled my hair down in messy braids. This is us, giving our best white trash expressions (I don't know what that means either.)


It also happened to be the weekend of the annual Cruise In, so between the car show crowd and the Styx fans there was a colorful group of people to behold. Right in front of us there sat two women; one, a woman who had come by herself to relive her glory days and couldn't stop moving to the music, the other, a silent Japanese woman who looked like she had gotten lost and stumbled upon the concert. The first woman (who I found out later is named Stacey) kept turning to the Japanese lady and talking to her excitedly about the concert, and the Japanese woman just kind of looked at her bewildered. It was making me laugh, so I took a picture of them the best I could without being hauled off by concert security (cameras being prohibited as they were.)
The concert was extremely entertaining... Those Styx characters put on a very fun show. Only a couple of the songs sounded even familiar to me, but it didn't matter. The keyboard-playing one was especially animated, and at one point he broke out into something completely different. Here's a little bit of what he was playing; I regret I didn't record it all but because I was doing it sneakily I had to cut it off early.

Hope you all were able to celebrate your freedoms this weekend in equally amusing ways.