At 5:00pm sharp we closed up the shop loaded up in my flood recovered ford truck and headed up state to the fair grounds!

we clanked thumped and at one point I thought we were loosing a wheel bearing all the way there…( Thanks to Sherwood Ford for doing a great job putting it all back together NOT).

We arrived at the fair Parking was a breeze. Trina and I grabbed water bottles out of the cooler and jumped on the tram to the front gate. We were to meet two friends Brenda and Rudy Who happened to have two extra tickets.

When we found them, Rudy told us that the tiger show was about to start. We’d never been there in time to see it so we all decided that it would be neat to watch! Those cats are absolutely huge! And the guy in the small ring with all those cats – either he’s really brave or really stupid. The tigers did some neat tricks; here are some pictures I shot with my Trusty camera phone:

After watching the tigers, it was time to Start heading to the Bandstand/Grandstand. I stopped for a slice of Grottos pizza (I was starving’) and Trina stopped for an “Amazing Onion.” As far as the onion goes, we all four had to split it! It was huge, greasy, and very good.

The grandstands where the concerts are held are pretty nice. The state fair is one of the few places you can safely take children to a “Rock” concert and not worry about out of control “mosh pits” and such. Anyway, not too long after we went in the opening act started. They were pretty good, actually for an opening band I though they were really good. They played a few classic rock songs, a few new rock songs and closed with one of their own. The three “front men” were rather normal while the Drummer was going, for lack of a better word, psycho in the back. But he gave the band a sence of energy. Oh, I forgot to tell you their name! They were… no laughs… SCRAPPLE.

Following Scrapple was supposed to be Foreigner, but do to a “medical emergency” they were replaced by 38 Special. They jammed for a while, playing the old classic favorites and some new stuff. Everyone was pretty happy about that, I don’t think a better substitution could have been found. They were encored by all us “rowdy” fans and concert goers. They said they were done, we didn’t take “no” for an answer!

Then came the Show topper…

Peter Frampton took the stage a little after 10pm. He told us how he almost wasn’t let in “They didn’t believe I was on the bus and wanted to see me, so I took my old wig and threw it at them” of Course he’s really bald now (age has it’s effects) but age didn’t effect he’s music. I saw Peter Frampton some where around the late 70’s he was good then but you can really feel the passion in his music today and his guitar playing was absolutly perfect. He really entranced the crowd with his guitar, it was so awesome! He cracked a few jokes between songs which were really great because we got to see more of him than just his music; we got to see his true personality, which in turn just made his music more enjoyable. The classics he played were better than I’ve ever heard them and the new songs were hypnotic. The new generation of singers and songwriters just don’t give the same attention to the music anymore. In my opinion, when a song can last upwards of 20 minutes and no one gets bored of it or sick of hearing it… that’s too powerful for words. He had the classic mouth harmonica, which drove his fans wild, I truly believe that at some point he was just saying “BLAH BLAH BLAH” into the harmonica and people were still going wild, screaming, yelling, clapping, dancing.

I took a few pictures, but at this point in the night, it was dark and the lights were too bright for my camera phone. I know scold me I forgot the camera! Now if you were around in the seventies theese pictures are probably quite clear!

If you want to check out his site it’sFrampton.com

The only thing left to say is…There’s nothing like listening to Peter Frampton hypnotize the crowd, watching the masses of people sway to a fro, and smelling the sweet smell of horse manure ( the wind blowing our way off the livestock exhibits) Oh yes this is southern Delaware!

Peter Frampton LIFE Delaware State Fair Wrongblog Wolfbernz Diary Classic Rock Concert