August 31, 2012 – monoblogue

Friday night videos episode 80

As another summer – or at least what’s considered summer by modern culture – comes to an end over this Labor Day weekend, this episode will highlight some of the places we may be able to go see live music until the summer of 2013 begins.

I’m going to start with an event coming up in just a couple weeks, the Save the BreastFest on September 13 at Pickles Pub in Ocean City. This was something I recorded at the very first rendition in 2009 with Witches Brew – a band which is participating again this year.

Coming up in October are two events on consecutive weekends, the Good Beer Festival (13th and 14th) and the Autumn Wine Festival (20th and 21st). Once again, these events will be held outside Salisbury at Pemberton Park.

To represent the Good Beer Festival I’m going to use Naylor Mill, who played at the first one in 2010, and Everett Spells’ 2009 AWF performance gives you an idea of the mood of the AWF (hopefully without the rain this year.)

Once we get by Halloween, there has to be a use for those expired pumpkins. Punkin Chunkin has grown from being a gathering of a few hundred to a nationally recognized early November party. Representing this show are my friends from Semiblind who played there last November. This year the event will be held November 2-4 outside Bridgeville, Delaware.

Yes, it always seems to be windy during those October and November days. And once the “shoulder season” has passed around these parts, we take things indoors with a holiday musical tradition called 12 Bands of Christmas. Last year I recorded Slackjaw doing the Pantera classic ‘Walk.’ No, it’s not exactly a holiday song but I like it, warts and all.

Normally the 12 Bands of Christmas falls on a Saturday in December, but in my experience it’s been held anywhere from the first Saturday to the last, depending on venue and band availability. So we’ll call this one TBA.

The same principle – get a lot of bands together and have a go at it – reigns at the Spring Luau, generally (but not always) held around the middle of March. From 2011, here’s a Gravitate original called ’40 Hours.’

And last but not least, as the weather begins to warm and spring is in the air, we crank up the grills and the decibels with Pork in the Park – the 2013 edition will be held April 19-21 at WinterPlace Park outside Salisbury. This, by the way, is the most popular music video on my monoblogue channel, with over 500 views.

So there you have it, the calendar tour until next summer. And now a few words about this Friday Night Video series.

After a nice round 80 episodes, this will be the last one. I think three years of doing these is plenty and to be quite honest it’s getting to be more of a chore to put these together than it’s worth. In my mind I basically have a choice: stop doing them or invest in the video equipment to do them right because I’m sort of embarrassed by how some of these videos I’ve shot and featured turned out. But I don’t have that sort of money laying around.

Moreover, these posts don’t really lend themselves to website viewership at a time when I have many more important things to discuss – that discussion is broadened considerably if I have people come and read the site! There’s no question I enjoy (and support) local, original music and I’m still going to do the occasional Weekend of Local Rock post because I still like doing them. In fact, I’m considering something for my next WLR which may be an opportunity to liven up and improve those posts. But I think the second concept of Friday Night Videos – originally, it was mainly political – has run its course.

And because I am a political animal at heart, I will leave this series with something in that vein; a TEA Party anthem if you will. I have featured this video a number of times before but it’s one that I still enjoy watching. I think this singer would be a splendid person to play at the new Heron Ponds amphitheater next summer, even if she’s just opening up for someone else.

For one last time, here’s Ava Aston with ‘We The People.’

With that, I leave Friday Night Videos behind. Thanks for watching.

The ‘No on 7’ campaign begins

First out of the gate in terms of issue advocacy is the “No on 7” group which announced its presence Thursday with a new website and television ad.

Their chair, Jacqueline Goodall, had this to say about their effort:

We are excited to get the facts out about the merits of Question 7. This ad is only the beginning of a serious effort to inform Maryland voters on the consequences of the proposed gaming expansion. The costs of another casino in Maryland exceed the benefits, and voters do not deserve to be misled by false promises and misinformation.

Question 7 is the result of a rushed special session and secret negotiations that have ignored the concerns of our residents and communities statewide. Between now and November, we look forward to an open and honest debate on the facts.

The facts, as they have them, pay particular attention to the tax rates which will be paid by casino operators and lack of transparency in the process. Compare this to the jobs-based approach being used by casino proponents and they could have an uphill battle.

They don’t need to convince me to vote against Question 7, but my opposition is more to the ignorant process the state is using by the need to change the Constitution every time another casino or table games are needed. Isn’t that what a General Assembly is supposed to do? Instead, they get the fun of changing tax rates at whim and moving the money promised to education around – and they didn’t need the voters to do that.

What should have been done in this General Assembly was to submit a Constitutional change rescinding the restrictive language passed in 2008 and replace it with language similar to that which allowed the Maryland Lottery. That agency has the freedom to change games at will, select whatever outlets it wants, and so forth. No need to vote on whether the corner store can start selling Powerball tickets.

If we vote against Question 7, perhaps the General Assembly can get to work on rectifying the problem knowing that voters are watching what they do.

It’s also interesting to note that one of the largest voting blocs in the state – Democrats in Montgomery County – has a leadership which, on balance, opposes the bill, according to David Moon and Maryland Juice. Needless to say, they’re unanimously supporting gay marriage and in-state tuition for illegal aliens, so the split on gambling is quite intriguing. I guess they really don’t want tax cuts for anyone, even casino owners.

Meanwhile, we now know the air war has been joined.

Your papers, please?

Yesterday I ran across something I found interesting, and perhaps a touch worrisome.

Once a week, my travels for my outside (non-writing) job take me down to Virginia, and yesterday was that day as I traveled from Berlin, MD to Chincoteague, VA and points beyond. At the point where Maryland 12 crosses into Virginia I was stopped by a cadre of Accomack County sheriff’s deputies who asked me for my license and upon inspection allowed me to proceed. I thought perhaps there was a manhunt, but I found out through a little research that Virginia conducts a “Border to Border Checkpoint” on the Thursday before Labor Day each year. I even found some photos from the very intersection I traveled through, from 2008.

I’m curious, though – where are the civil libertarians on this one? Of course, I wasn’t driving drunk or recklessly speeding so people would say I had nothing to fear. But I don’t see a real purpose for this event aside from getting people used to having other, similar harassment operations like sobriety checkpoints. I don’t care much for those because I believe there’s more effective ways to catch drunk drivers like, say, patrolling near watering holes. If you really want to make this work, try a sobriety checkpoint just outside Crisfield on Tawes day or after a Ravens game, when you actually might need it. I guarantee neither will ever happen because the “wrong” people would be stopped and the public would complain vehemently.

I have nothing against the Accomack County deputy who stopped me, since he was doing the job assigned to him. It was only a momentary delay on my way through the workday. But what happens when they decide to do it twice a year, or monthly? We already have the conspiracy theorists who fret about a militarized police, so why add fuel to that fire by continuing this scattershot approach to law enforcement?