A Career in the Minor Leagues

Ahoy readership (if there is any)! I have returned following a brief furlough that found me in real places doing real things. I will pilot this one straight before doing some cerebral acrobatics.

Monday night found me in the company of the mythical Stephen Patrick Morrissey at the supposedly critically-acclaimed NorVa on Monticello in downtown Norfolk. This I consider to be farcical, at least in the sense of the NorVa's billet and radio stations/promotional companies The NorVa teams with, creating some of the most horrifically ghastly scenarios ever to be dreamt of by the human race. For example, in the month of July, the venue is hosting dated-screamo band Atreyu, who sound like thousands of dogs being crammed into a garbage disposal; what might be trumped by the dual-guitar cacophony sludge of Atreyu is what follows Atreyu on the July calendar...Drowning Pool.

Now, I'm not really hip to the history of Drowning Pool, but their singer died five years or so. If I were Drowning Pool's bassist, I would have come to the realization that my crappy band has lost its singer and we should all really start thinking about not being in a crappy band. But no, they persevered and are back in action. Sweet. Good for them, I guess. They can follow in the footsteps of other bands that decided to go forth, like The Doors, Nirvana, and the Yankees after the death of Thurman Munson in 1979.

As you are well aware, the Yankees did win the pennant in the strike-shortened season of 1981 but lost to the Dodgers in the Series, and did not win the pennant again until 1996. The Doors and Nirvana were having rebuilding years in 1981 and failed to make it out of the second division.
But what is truly, truly worse about all of this is that days before the "respective" Atreyu and Drowning Pool shows, bands will compete to open for the two red-stater bands. It is hard to use variations of the root word "respect"when talking about Atreyu or Drowning Pool, but I guess that no one wants to spend a career in the minor leagues.

The Morrissey show on Monday was sponsored by 96X, 106.1 WROX FM, which purports itself to be "Hampton Roads' Extreme Rock Radio Station." There is no need to debate the semantics of what is extreme, although I would put my life on the line to say that 96X DJs ain't spinnin' any Swedish black metal any time in the next century, so that's that. In any case, I really laughed my ass off when I found out 96X was sponsoring the show, because 96X has probably never put any sort of Morrissey recording into its equipment. To corroborate this, let's see what they have played in terms of artists and frequency, at least since 12AM today, courtesy of their website:

Linkin Park: 13 times
Red Hot Chili Peppers: 8 times
Green Day: 6 times
Peter Bjorn and John: 5 times WHAT THE HELL!?
Morrissey: ...0 times

Let's be mindful of the time stamp, as I wrote this around 6:45PM on Thursday. Even Interpol, the next band 96X is sponsoring for a NorVa show, got 1 play in the last 18 hours. We're all lucky PETA is headquartered in Norfolk, otherwise The Moz would have added some time to his decade-plus long absence from Hampton Roads. And no one needs to listen to Linkin Park 13 times in less than 24 hours. Sorrow did not come in the end, as Morrissey and his tight, incendiary backing band made the scalped eBay tickets worth more than the sticker price.