What do Prince William, Star Lord, the Governor from “The Walking Dead” and the lead singer of the Killers all have in common?
It’s their birthday today! Not just them. I mean, it’s a lot of people’s birthday today. Since there’s over 7.6 billion people in the world, around 20 million folks celebrate their birthday every day.
But today is different. Today, someone amazing turns 21-years-old. Actually, something: Rockfest.
Not familiar with it? Rockfest was supposed to be Blockbuster Music’s annual rock festival, bringing in the top bands from across the globe. The inaugural event took place at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth June 21, 1997. The reason that you’re probably not familiar with it is because the inaugural event doubles as the only event.
Instead of pushing through the decades so that Twitter and Facebook could celebrate an annual collection of rock’s (or pop rock more precisely) biggest names finally being old enough to drink, Rockfest pulled a Kentucky basketball recruit and was one-and-done.
What went wrong? It certainly wasn’t the line-up. Here are the marquee bands of the mid-90’s who took the stage that day:
Bush, Collective Soul, Jewel, Matchbox Twenty, The Nixon’s, No Doubt, Paula Cole, Soak, Sugar Ray and the Wallflowers.
Side note – How in the world were the Toadies not part of that line-up? Did they fire their manager or stone him for this?
It wasn’t the exposure, for sure. MTV was actually there because previously MTV cared about music.
Was it the crowd? Well, yes and no. No one really knows how many people were there that day. The estimates range between 150,000 to 500,000 people. By all metrics, that would be great…if everyone had paid to be there. You see, one of the promotional tools Blockbuster employed was that anyone who purchased a C.D. from Blockbuster received a free ticket. So if you bought Bush’s “Razorblade Suitcase” for $12.99, you were golden to see them headline this gig.
(What should come as a surprise to no one is that Blockbuster Music was out of business two years later.)
Also playing a factor were two things I already mentioned: the show was in Texas on the first day of summer. When you think the mother of of music festivals, you probably imagine Woodstock. The high during those three days was 80. The average daily high in Fort Worth, TX for June is 94 degrees, plus humidity. Now imagine you have at least 150,000 bodies pressed together from 7:00 a.m. to midnight on a concrete race track. At one point Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty used a hose to dowse the crowd. He could have skipped “Long Day”, and the fans would have forgiven him.
So why would I celebrate a festival that couldn’t even last for a do-over? It’s where I fell in love with Rock ‘N’ Roll.
Allow me to use the lyrics to “Hip Hop is Dead” to describe me:
“On my second marriage; Hip Hop’s my first wife.”
I don’t really have much in common with the song’s performer, Nasir Bin Olu Dara Jones (better known as Nas) – I only have three names, I prefer Maker’s Mark to Hennessey, I’ve never obliterated Jay-Z in a rap battle and the most I’ve and I typically pay my taxes.
Honestly, I don’t even like rap. But the relationship that he felt with it mirrors mine to rock. It didn’t always, though.
Before Rockfest entered my life, I was Mr. Country Music. You see, rock did not have a home in my parents’ cars. It wasn’t even granted asylum. In my pre-teen years, I heard nothing but country music. The closest I came to rock was the Eagles’ tribute album “Common Threads” (you haven’t lived until you’ve head-banged to John Anderson’s version of “Heartache Tonight.”).
Through the years, I would occasionally catch sprinkles of rock music. My folks would engage in the classic debate of the Rolling Stones versus the Beatles (sorry Mom – it’s the Stones). I would sometimes be subjected to The Beach Boys (thankfully I didn’t know the number to Child Protective Services back then). Kelly’s Heroes locked the Mike Curb Congregation into my brain almost like a superstition that you had to repeat every so often to keep yourself even-keeled.
Those are oldies, though. I was out of the loop when it came to modern music. By the time Kurt Cobain, the musical pariah for my generation, killed himself in 1994 I had never actually heard a Nirvana song on the radio station. Guns ‘N’ Roses were just those guys who played Jim Rome’s theme song. I thought the Ramones were what happened to the Hanson brother in the Slap Shot sequel.
But it’s pretty much unavoidable for a teenaged boy who plays sports and has friends not to be exposed to popular rock.
As I grew up, I was shown more bands. I was still scared to death of Pantera but at the ripe age of 14, I bought my first rocks album: “August and Everything After” by the Counting Crows.
It was popular among my age group at the time and mellow enough that my dad didn’t “accidently” scratch it while ejecting it from the car. It turned out to be my gateway drug.
Other middle of the road albums followed – “Throwing Copper”, “One Hot Minute”, “Tiny Music”, “New Miserable Experience”, etc. I guess you would consider this rock’s courtship of me. And don’t get me wrong – I LIKED rock. I just wasn’t in love yet.
The same could have been said about my wife. It wasn’t love at first sight. I liked her a lot immediately. Love eventually came, albeit out of nowhere to me. One night, I ditched an annual group outing just to hang out with her and watch “Super Troopers” at my apartment. There’s no schedule for falling in love – it just came over me as we laughed and traded stories that night.
With rock music, the date was scheduled, but the transformation was just as unforeseen.
My friend Jimmy wanted to go to Rockfest in Dallas during the summer of ‘97. Despite assuming Sugar Ray was the actual boxer diving into a new career, I made the cut for the group he invited. It wasn’t something I hungered for, but who wouldn’t turn down a summer road trip with friends, and the chance to hear “One Headlight” live.
Jimmy’s dad drove a half dozen of us up, and sat in the very back of the crowd on a blanket, reading a book. He gave us free range, but asked us to swing back by so he could obtain a periodic head-count.
The show gave a rock novice everything that could hook him: Soak was kicked out for stage diving, women flashed throughout the day, Sugar Ray turned out to be a fun punk band (think their first two albums except “Fly”), free beer from some strangers, women flirting with me so I would put them on my shoulders so they could scream sexual offers to Thomas and my now a—time favorite bank – Collective Soul.
Now, at this time, Collective Soul to me was just the “Shine” band since between MTV and VH1, that video was on every hour of everyday. And since Counting Crows was the first rock C.D. that I ever bought, I made them the first concert T-Shirt that I ever bought.
Huge mistake.
There is a reason that I have seen Collective Soul five times. However good they sound on their albums, they sound better live. Ed Roland, their lead singer, is a natural performer. Their shows have non-stop energy, even during the slow stuff! From the sparse recollections of that show that you can find online, Collective Soul won the stage that day.
The Counting Crows? Not so much.
The only comparison that comes to mind in relating the expectations and the results would be the 2012 Los Angeles Lakers that brought in Dwight Howard and Steve Nash to join Kobe Bryant, Paul Gasol and Ron Artest. Sports Illustrated drooled over that team in the preseason. In the post-season, they were swept by the Spurs in the first round.
(After the Counting Crows’ inadvertent P.S.A. to never do drugs. I raced back to the merchandise table to request and exchange for my Counting Crows T-shirt for a Collective Soul one. I feel pretty confident the merchandise hadn’t left that hard all day.)
Despite that abomination for a set, the show was mesmerizing. I had never seen such vitality in music. No crowd at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo had ever been enthralled as the one in Fort Worth that day as they watched Gwen Stefani of No Doubt climb the scaffolding during their set.
By the time we left (we didn’t make it through Bush), my whole perspective on music had changed. I wanted more of this Rock ‘N’ Roll thing.
As the years went by, I moved into the harder stuff. I’ve gone back and embraced the albums that I missed while focusing on Garth Brooks or albums that I missed because, well, I wasn’t alive yet. Rock music has become such a driving force in my life. I worked four years in a C.D. store. I buy cell phones solely based on their capacity to store more songs. I have close to 50 playlists on my iTunes. I’ve probably spent some smaller country’s G.D.P. at the Silver Bullet Icehouse’s jukebox.
So yeah, I’d say I’ve been wholly committed to Rock ‘N’ Roll since that day. In fact, maybe I shouldn’t be wishing Rockfest a ‘Happy Birthday’. Maybe I should be wishing it a ‘Happy Anniversary.’