09/08/02 - 7 Years Ago in Shakopee, MN - WLOL Wango Tango

Print ad (above) and ticket stub (below) for the WLOL Wango Tango 2002 at Shakopee, MN.

(Images & Photo via: NYCDreamin Archives)

One of a handful of pretty horrid photos I took that day. This is Night Ranger, not that you could tell or anything...

The Wango Tango was an all day event, held 7 years ago at Canterbury Downs race track in Shakopee, MN, sponsored by the local FM Classic Rock station WLOL. I was wondering why, since Ted Nugent was not there, they chose to call it the Wango Tango? But Whatever. I picked up a pair of tickets in advance ($20.00 each) for my then girlfriend and myself.

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The day of the show arrives and she and I and "337" head over to Shakopee and as we're getting out of the car, this girl comes walking up to us and asks us if we need tickets. Obviously, the girlfriend and I didn't need one, but "337", who was gonna buy one at the gate said, "Yeah, How much?" "They're FREE," the girl announced, "Comp tickets!" "337" looked at us and smiled this huge "Ha Ha" smile as the girlfriend and I were exchanging "WTF?" glances and I was thinking how I could have saved $40.00 for beer and food or something. Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

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The day started off with Starship featuring Mickey Thomas. I had kinda low expectations for them, but they proved to be very impressive, sounding amazing live. I was thinking that it was too bad that Grace Slick was no longer in the band, but they played my favorite Starship tracks "Jane", with a blistering guitar solo, and "No Way Out", so that was cool.

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I had absolutely no inclination to see John Kay's Steppenwolf, so when they came out we decided to go look around the grounds for a bit and grab some food. We wandered back over to a good spot about three quartes of the way through their set, and as I expected, they were not so amazing. Born to be Wild? More like born to be mild.

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During the late part of the afternoon, Night Ranger came on. I had seenthem several times previously and was pretty excited to see them again as they always put on a high energy, rockin' show. They were pretty kick ass on this particular evening as well and the three of us really enjoyed their set as the afternoon sunshine faded from the sky and and darkness fell.

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The beautiful late summer evening ended with headliners, the "American Band", Grand Funk Railroad who were also in top form on this particular evening. And unlike the time I saw them just about one year later, there was no problem lighting up a cigarette, no one hasseled us. There seemd to be quite a few people wearing Kiss t-shirts in the crowd, obviously there to support GFR guitarist Bruce Kulick, who'd played with Kiss for about 10 years prior to hooking up with GFR. The only real problem of the day were all the older - middle-age people who had parked their fat lazy asses in lawn chairs in the first several rows in front of the stage. I always thought that area was for the crazy rockin' fans who were able to stand throughout the entire show. But the old drunk Steppenwolf fans seemed to need to sit down to make it through the show and were not about to budge for an reason. Other than that this was a very fun day and it was nice that 3 of the 4 bands put on excellent, memorable performances.

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I brought a camera with us and took a few photos. They turned out mostly horrible, but you can check them out HERE if you want to waste some time trying to make out the details...