Fiasco

I'll say this about NEPA. When we make the national news, we go HARD. I won’t reiterate the details of the Luzerne County / Low Cut Connie fiasco here, because every time I get into it my brain starts to wither. I'll just assume that anybody reading this right now is aware of what happened over the last week or so. If you are not, it's probably best not to ask. You have enough on your plate already.

Anyway, the Rockin' the River event went off without a(nother) hitch Friday night. Thousands of folks gathered to hear yet another AC/DC tribute act sing songs about Satan interspersed with other songs positively brimming with dick metaphors, while awaiting the headline act's showstopper, a song about using psychological warfare on your girl in the backseat in order to fuck her. When times get rough, Meatloaf has always been my salve as well. Luzerne County all but stood up when it was over and shouted...."See what we can do! Take that, you woke bastards!"

Ok, they didn't really say that. Nor do I find AC/DC dick songs offensive at all. My favorite dick lyrics of theirs comes from "Let's Get it Up"

It's high tide / so let's ride
The moon is rising and so am I

I mean, that's a great line. And the song IS more subtle than “Inject theVenom”.

I am also a fan of Meatloaf's "Paradise By the Dashboard Light", especially the cameo from the Yankee dude. The song might be a little creepy, but it WAS the 70s. It's catchy as hell and I know every lyric, which I sing along to with the same gusto I lean into "American Pie". You feel the same way, so shut up.

In other words, music isn't divisive. It's fun. Pull the stick out of your ass. Filming Elvis only from the waist up only made things WORSE, bro. In the same way that NOT showing the shark in much of JAWS made that movie better.

But back to Luzerne County. The only person who made statements about this was somebody named Romilda Crocamo. She is the county manager. I don't know what that is. Anyway, she suggested that Low Cut Connie's inclusiveness, which she called "propaganda", was so egregious that she "could not guarantee the safety and security" of anybody associated with the event if they were allowed to play. She also copped on to having never heard any of Low Cut Connie's music, but instead "received varied messages" about the band. Break this down. She is saying that if this band played, her own people would have started rioting with each other in front of their own children. It would have kick-started a lawn-chair-tossing-soccer-mom catastrophe. To me this seems a pretty insulting thing to say about your own neighbors. But then I’m from Lackawanna County, a place that nearly reignited the civil war over the re-naming of the Scranton Expressway. So I must tread lightly here.

What Crocamo surely heard was that Low Cut Connie had cracked one of President Obama's public Spotify playlists, been embraced by Elton John, and that the band was not a fan of our current President. Plus the singer may or may not be….well….you know. Such things might not matter where you come from, but Luzerne County takes these types of things very seriously. So the decision was made to cancel the band, pay them their $10,000 contractually obligated fee, and hope they'd stay quiet.

They didn't.

That kickstarted the next crisis, which was hiring as a replacement a band featuring a member who had done time as a sex offender. I don't expect people to do background checks on lead singers, so I don't blame the county for this part. But in retrospect it DID seem like karma for the first bit. Now, instead of dealing with channel 16 and the Citizen's Voice, poor Romilda is dodging calls from ABC, NPR, and the New York Times.

It takes a village to put on shows like this, and surely not everybody involved agrees with the county's decision to inject partisan politics into the event, all in the name of rejecting a band for being “too political”. Romilda standing up there all alone reminded me of the Med Ed spokesman thrown to the press during the Three Mile Island meltdown.

Nobody else involved says a word. Why?

Silence. Fear of losing a job, perhaps? I don't dismiss the gravity of that, although if true I'm not sure it's the best job to begin with. We live in culture that weaponizes fear. Standing up for what’s right can be more terrifying than the alternative, which is why even large corporations like Paramount have resorted to paying bribes. When that happens, to use a rock and roll line, “what can a poor boy do?”

And so it goes. As for the bands who agreed to play.....I get it. It pays a helluva lot more than the $100 a guy you're getting in local bars. But by playing, you are tacitly agreeing that the banning of Low Cut Connie for the crime of having different political views than the majority of Luzerne County is perfectly fine. I really don't give a shit how you spin it. Queen and Rod Stewart played Sun City. You played Rockin' the River. Only weirdos like me make these connections, and there’s not many of us around anymore.

But there are a few.

And we are fun to drink with. Join us. We’ll be the ones jamming to Low Cut Connie….AND AC/DC.

In a bit…

—tf