Heart of Lincoln Land

Yesterday I took a break from my other projects and went to the State Fair. I normally go at least once every year. This year, being the Lincoln Bicentennial, the butter cow (a state fair tradition that goes back to 1922) featured a young Abraham Lincoln sitting down next to a log and a tree stump reading a book. I thought the artist did a good job depicting Lincoln’s non-farm-related ambitions and dislike of manual hard labor, since he’s not in any way attending to the cow. He has an axe and a split rail behind him, creating the “Railsplitter” image. The sculpture took over 1200 pounds of butter to create.

The highlight of the day, though, was the concert with Heart and the Bangles. I’m a big fan of 80s music, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. The Bangles were first, and they kicked it off with their rockin’ rendition of “Hazy Shade of Winter”, which has always been one of my favorite covers. They ended it with the crowd-pleasing “Walk Like an Egyptian”. In between they played their other hits (”Manic Monday”, Eternal Flame”) and some songs that I haven’t heard before. I still liked hearing them, though.

After that (and a short break), Heart kicked it off with their 70s hit “Barracuda”. I guess I never was a huge fan of 70s Heart (it always felt a little rough around the edges and a bit repetitious for me) – though I do like some of their 70s songs like “Crazy on You”. However, they followed that song up with what is my favorite Heart song – the inspirational 1985 hit “Never”. It was in the 80s that Heart expanded their style and combined that with their singing talent to produce true rock masterpieces, and “Never” is one of them. Heart encouraged everyone to sing along, and crowd went wild and everybody sang along (including me). I know all of the words to “Never” by heart, and I sang every one of them. “Never” has always had a lot of meaning to me – it’s a positive, uplifting song about NEVER giving up. I’ve always thought that Lincoln would like 80s music if he was alive today and this song is an example.

They rocked on, mixing in many of their hits from both the 70s and 80s (and some newer songs). The synths were noticeably absent from their rendition of their 80s hits (like “These Dreams” and “Alone”), but it didn’t matter – it was replaced with guitar that sounded just as good, and just as emotional. And of course, the singing was still incredible. They ended the concert with “Crazy On You”, and after that they performed a 3-song encore that included “Magic Man”. All in all, it was an awesome night with great music.

I’ll end this post with some words that I think are very relevant to today and that I think Lincoln would agree with and enjoy hearing.

We can’t go on and on
Just running away
If we stay any longer
We will surely never get away
Oh, oh, anything you want
We can make it happen
Stand up and turn around
Never let them shoot us down
Never – no!, never – no!, never, never run away…

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