DaytonDailyNews.com

Trans-Siberian Orchestra: Can they be stopped???

By Ron Rollins | Thursday, August 28, 2008, 10:40 AM

This just in from the folks at the Nutter Center… CAN ANYONE PREVENT THIS???

Winter’s Hottest Annual Arena Rock Attraction to Visit Dayton on Sunday, Jan. 4

Tickets ($58.50, $48.50, $38.50) for the show go on-sale Monday, Sept. 8 at 10 a.m. via Livenation.com, E.J. Nutter Center ticket office, Ticketmaster or charge-by-phone at (937) 228-2323.

I’m just askin’.

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The greatest recordings ever?

By Ron Rollins | Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 11:30 AM

Hmmmm… could be…

My friend Bruce Miller sent along this link to an NPR story on a new book that lists 1,000 all-time essential recordings… I’ll have to pick it up…

Music! Lists! As Bruce pointed out, two of my favorite things.

Listen up!

BTW, what’s YOUR favorite recording of all time? I’ll start with “Born To Run.”

Discuss!

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A lousy movie summer for minorities

By Ron Rollins | Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 07:57 AM

Caught John Ridley on NPR this morning, with this insightful blog entry on the near-total lack of minority faces in this summer’s movie offerings. Read it… it’s quite food for thought.

He’s right, though; as I think back on it, there were no movies by major black stars this summer that I can think of, other than Will Smith.

Ridley did leave off Morgan Freeman in “The Dark Knight,” but the only other black character I can remember in that movie was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit….

It still seemed like a pretty white summer, all things considered…

Thoughts, anyone?

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And she’s beautiful, too…

By Ron Rollins | Tuesday, August 26, 2008, 10:26 PM

Just what we’ve been waiting for: Vanity Fair does one of its signature profiles on the most interesting woman in the world, Carla Bruni.

Thanks!

It’s long, but well worth the read.

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New CD from The Hold Steady

By Ron Rollins | Monday, August 25, 2008, 05:02 PM

Ahoy, kids! The disc du jour:

rock

STAY POSITIVE

The kids who are listening to the Hold Steady are probably too young to remember that back in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, a spate of Springsteen-influenced groups spun off from his sudden popularization of the Jersey sound: bar-band energy, retro-rock hooks, long-form lyrical storytelling, gruff vocals and lots of keyboard marked everybody from Bon Jovi to Southside Johnny and the Jukes. Oh yeah, and at least one mention per album of a making out under a boardwalk.

The Hold Steady, from Brooklyn, are working the very same turf long after even Bruce himself has moved onto different sorts of stuff, and they’re doing it without even a trace of the irony one expects from guys this young who play it straight-faced with classic-rock forms these days.

“Stay Positive,” the band’s fourth album since starting up in 2004, has the whole shtick down pat, from the songs about aging mill towns to the organ riffing a la Danny Federici, circa 1978. The gruff voice comes from singer Craig Finn, who unabashedly credits his influences; good for him.

Despite the honesty, though, what is the difference between sincere homage and shameless ripoff? Dunno about you, but I don’t think the aforementioned lack of irony helps. Grade: C+

iPod picks: “Stay Positive,” “Navy Sheets.”

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Worth note

By Ron Rollins | Sunday, August 24, 2008, 09:12 AM

A nifty quote I stumbled across in my morning surfing. It’s from English theologian Bishop Joseph Butler:

“Every thing is what it is, and not another thing.”

Indeed. Don’t most of us find ourselves at least a bit guilty of automatically drawing comparisons between people, things and events in order to, we believe, better understand them? If Butler is more correct, he has something to say, I think, about our traditional notions of “context” and applying it to the matter at hand, which we often do by looking outside the situation itself — perhaps improperly, or unhelpfully, so.

Anyway, just a Sunday morning thought. Happy contextualizing to you!

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X-Fest: Leave the kiddies at home, please

By Ron Rollins | Friday, August 22, 2008, 06:48 PM

Got a call the other day from a reader who recalled a column I wrote a few years ago about X-Fest, the big hard-rock festival that happens every September at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, and she had a question:

Should she let her 16-year-old daughter go?

“I haven’t gone, obviously,” she said. “And she really, really wants to go. Her dad is leaning toward no, and I’m leaning toward yes, but I don’t know what goes on there. What do you think?”

First, I was reluctant to say; I joke with friends that the only parenting advice I ever give is: “Remember, after two they outnumber you.” But she beseeched, and I gave in.

She had questions: Could her daughter get hurt? Was it an aggressive crowd?

I had questions back: Did she consider her daughter mature and reliable? Yes and yes. Did they have a trusting relationship? Yes. Did she trust the friends she’d be with? Yes.

In that case, I suggested her daughter would be fine. But I added the caveat that X-Fest — with all its mosh-pitting, drunkenness and, um, bead-trading — won’t scar any kid for life, but is still very much an adult event. This year’s, by the way, is Sept. 14.

Mom seemed satisfied, but it occurred to me that there are probably a lot of parents in her shoes: unsure whether it’s appropriate for their teens to attend an event that they themselves have no experience with.

Obviously, plenty of parents have utterly no concerns about letting their kids do whatever the kids want, without regard to such things as age-appropriateness, and I figure this whole conversation is lost on them. I also realize that any teenagers reading this have already pegged me as an old-fart loser who has no business weighing in on an event they enjoy. Oh, well.

In fact, however, I enjoy X-fest, too, and I go most years with the same group of middle-aged friends. Why? Well, in recent years, it hasn’t been so much for the music, which tends toward the samey, angry muck that marks most hard rock these days. We go, honestly, because the event is all the things that make it completely inappropriate for anybody younger than 16, and for most people younger than 18: It’s raunchy, sweaty, dusty, beer-drenched, ear-splitting, crowd-jostling fun in the sun — a day of the sort of utter, hedonistic forgetfulness that one can achieve only at a large, outdoor rock festival. I don’t have the time or vacation days to drive to Lollapalooza or South by Southwest; in a third-tier market like Dayton, you get X-Fest. So, OK.

There are things about it I really like: local bands getting a shot on a big stage; watching the NFL in the rowdy side tent; the crowd surfers slithering across a sea of hands; the Marine recruiters egging kids on to do more pull-ups; the endless variety of T-shirts and tattoos; the fact that most everybody is unfailingly polite and easygoing; and, yes, the massive clang and crash of the music, even if it isn’t the stuff I listen to all the time.

The 13-year-olds who do? Let ’em listen to it at home on the radio for a few more years, before you send them to hang out with a few thousand badly behaving old folks. Frankly, we can have more fun if they aren’t around.

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