It's Only Rock and Roll...

The city was electric. It was the annual "Taste of Sioux Falls" and although I was only visiting for 2 days, the feeling was palpable. Everywhere I went, from the gas station to the supermarket to the guy working behind the front desk at the hotel where I was staying; everyone wanted to know: Was I going to see Kansas play at the Taste of Sioux Falls?
I wasn't I told them, feigning disappointment. I was only in town to visit family I said, but had I known, I surely would have made room on my schedule for such a momentous occasion.

In South Dakota it mattered little that the band featured only 2 of it's original 7 members and neither one was the violin player who gave them their signature sound on such classics as "Dust in the wind" and "Point of no return." No, the fact that these paunchy, graying 50 somethings were setting up shop on the Menard's stage next to Bubba Tuckers BBQ was good enough for the mostly overweight masses who waited anxiously all year for the 3 days that signaled it was OK to go out and eat with reckless abandon. It was as if the Beatles themselves had reunited and were about to play the entire White Album all the way through and then take requests from sauce stained cards that had been handed out to the audience before the show. It was electric.

I understand it's all relative. I'm sure that someone from Chicago would find the goings on in Minneapolis, the city in which I live, to be lacking and a little "quaint" but I can't remember one person asking me if I was going to see Creedence Clearwater Revival featuring original member Bob Johnson on bass at The Taste of Minnesota. It just didn't garner all that much excitement.