Band: Jefferson Starship
Album: Knee Deep in the Hoopla
Best song: It’s really terrible.
Worst song: The whole album is pretty bad.
I grew up in Cook County, Illinois. As in, the Chicago suburbs. SO, our county didn’t have a fair in the same way that so many rural and suburban counties do. No huge pumpkins. No 4H. Just Taste of Chicago, which completely rules.
Still, Illinois is a fairly rural farm state and the state fair is a big deal. My parents took my sister and I down there around 1985 — I could be remembering it wrong — and we saw the coolest stuff. When you’re that small, the giant produce and the ridiculous animals are all amazing, especially if you come from suburbia. The closest thing to livestock I ever saw was the everpresent deer living in the forest preserve near our house. Also, squirrels.
Anyway, like most fairs, the Illinois state fair I attended as a wee lad featured a band with a near-empty fueltank. I’m almost surely remembering this wrong, because 1985 was the year that Jefferson Starship’s giant megahit, “We Built This City,” was released. Nevertheless, it’s a memory in my head.
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I don’t have a lot of memories of being so young; who does? I do remember the crowd of people at the Starship show. Maybe that’s a made-up memory, from years of seeing fairs and the crowds inherent there.
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For what it’s worth, this album really sucks and Starship is pretty terrible.
