Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Dear N.C. State Fair: We'd like to fill your Oct. 22 slot
The N.C. State Fair announced its lineup earlier this week, and there's good news: Tickets are recession-cheap, ranging from $5 for several shows to $15 for Third Day. So much for The Beatitudes: Religion is expensive, y'all.
There's bad news, too: The lineup isn't very good. While WRAL trots out the local connections of the lineup (Eric Church, Kellie Pickler, Jason Michael Carroll), we don't see a line-up that includes kid-stars Nat and Alex Wolff, "The Temptations" featuring Dennis Edwards (who was, lo and behold, actually the group's lead singer once upon a time), and singer/ Dancing with the Stars beauty Julianne Hough to be worth selling the farm.
But good news remains! There's an open slot on Oct. 22 for one more performer. Triangle Music predicts the return of a Food Network star, and they're probably right. But we've got some ideas of our own. Hit the jump, and giggle...
1. Bell Biv Devoe: New New Edition, same as the Old New Edition.
2. Jesus Jones: The Mexican George Jones!
3. A Children's Choir Tribute to "The King of Pop": The recently deceased? Underprivileged youth? WRAL feature! "SORRY, FOLKS, AT CAPACITY."
4. Crystal Gayle: Not as good as crystal meth, amirite?
5. Roxette: Musta been love, but she’s over now...
6. Arghoslent: Name the only band thing that could make a line-up featuring Jason Michael Carroll, Eric Church and THIRD DAY more white? You guessed it: an actual white-power death metal band from Virginia!
7. Michael W. Smith: Airbrushed for the Lord!
8. Sarah Palin: Every sex joke we tabled was too offensive, so insert your own between these giant, gaping brackets: [ ].
9. Firefall: Denim suits with flutes are the new rad...
10: Local Bands: Here's an idea. Instead of booking bands that pay lip service to localism (and instead of giving WRAL a reason to tout its own local cultural lip-service), why not do something completely crazy and book 10 really local bands with decent statewide followings? Pay them less than Bucky Convington's mustache surely gets; save some money; and recruit a new audience to Dorton Arena that will actually come to the State Fair for reasons other than the procurement of ironic Facebook photos featuring fried shit ... and, of course, the Demolition Derby, which is awesome. And, hey, here's trivia as an omen: Ivan "Rosebud" Howard even named his recording studio "Thee Dorton Arena." Hot dog!
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