Beer, Boats & Bands

Here's a few events from my month of August.

Great Taste of the Midwest
August 12 was the Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison, WI. I made the trek up there to try some tastey brews with Randy Stevens and Jason Kneer. Originally, Beth and I were to go up there with Randy and Jenni. However, Beth's 25th high school reunion was then scheduled for that weekend in which she wanted to attend. Beth told me to go on ahead to Madison, and since Jenni didn't want to be the "token female," it turned into a guy trip.

There's a few hundred beers to try, though I probably only tried about 10-12. After a while, you find a table with good beer and few people waiting in line. We met up with some of our Jaycee friends up there as well. Later that day, we continued the party in downtown Madison, where we found it's next to impossible to hail a cab.


Rock The Boat
I think the third time's the charm with this Peoria Jaycees event. The first couple of years of organizing this event saw mediocre to poor results. But this year, with some good promotion, the event appears to be a success. Basically for a $30 ticket, you get a two hour cruise on the Spirit of Peoria, with all food and drinks free. Music this year was from Rachel's Hippo.

The weekend started Friday, Aug 18 with the Peoria Jaycees Homecoming, which is where we invite back past members, honor and roast our president from the previous year and celebrate our anniversary. Again, they wanted me to fry chicken for dinner. Uncle Charlie I think would be proud. I cut and cleaned all the 10 chickens to be fried that Friday. Then that night, about all I did was stand. Midday Saturday as I started to unload my truck from the night before, I felt some tightness in my back. "Oh no" I said to myself, knowing that we looked forward to going to Rock the Boat that night. Sure enough, my back was going out on me.

I stretched it, iced it, downed some Alieve and sucked it up and went to the boat anyway. Good thing I don't dance.


MDA Benefit in Princeville
Last night, Nootril Drop was the top act (only because we were about the only act) at an MDA Benefit that was held in Princeville. They had blocked off the section of Walnut St. where they served pork sandwiches, beer and soda. Also a ton of raffles and prizes. They also have a converted semi-trailer that configures into a stage where they had us set up. Things went really well and I think we picked up a couple of leads for future gigs.

I Want My MTV

Twenty-five years ago today, Music Television, MTV hit the airwaves. Unlike Al Gore who claims to have invented the Internet, I invented MTV. Unbeknownst to me was that MTV was already on the air and I just didn't know it existed.

But as a teenager in high school, I would see these videos over late night/weekend TV. I then thought how cool it would be to have a channel that would play nothing but music videos like radio stations play songs. Back then I thought that you'd have a play list of 25, maybe 30 songs and you'd be done. "They have to make more videos for it to work well," I thought.

Anyway, the following summer I saw the announcement on a "dead" cable channel that coming soon, Music Television. That was 1982. Now I'm middle aged and MTV is nothing but shit. They don't even play music videos anymore, do they? And if they did, it's nothing good. I guess you can still consider it a "dead" cable channel.