Rock against racism: Concert is counterpoint to KKK marches

The fol­low­ing is from a 1986 edi­tion of the Roanoke Times, writ­ten by Bri­an O’Neil:

The “Chris­t­ian” Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are march­ing in Rad­ford and Chris­tians­burg on Sat­ur­day.

So far there are no plans for them to march in Roanoke. But you nev­er know. Sup­pose some store at Val­ley View Mall has a week­end sale on sheets and the Grand Impe­r­i­al Queen-Size Mat­tress hears about it?

Before you know it, a mobile white sale might be head­ing north on Inter­state 81.

Roanoke is ready to meet just such a con­tin­gency.
“Rock Against Racism,” sub­ti­tled “our loud but peace­ful response to a KKK march in the Roanoke area,” is going to crank up at the Elm­wood Park Amphithe­atre at 11 a.m. Sat­ur­day and go on until 8 p.m.

The 10 band con­cert is the prod­uct of one of those bar­room con­ver­sa­tions that usu­al­ly does­n’t go any­where.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, Bil­ly Fos­ter of Roanoke ran into Kevin Jenks at The Bar­rel House in Salem. They got to talk­ing about the Klan’s nick­el tour of South­west Vir­ginia.
As Fos­ter, 27, tells it, Jenks said, “I’d like to see about throw­ing a rock against racism.”

“I was real­ly sor­ry I did­n’t think of it myself,” Fos­ter said. “I went home won­der­ing if he was real­ly seri­ous about this.“

He was. Fos­ter start­ed work­ing on it the very next day. The two made phone calls, lin­ing up bands to vol­un­teer their ser­vices. They had a tough time find­ing an insur­ance com­pa­ny that would offer lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance for a hard rock con­cert, but they final­ly got that, too.

The Record Exchange, Kaiser Music, the Sound Stop, Bote­tourt Seam­less Gut­ters and a cou­ple of anony­mous busi­ness­es pro­vid­ed the mon­ey to cov­er the $150 insur­ance pre­mi­um. The city pro­vid­ed the per­mit to have the con­cert.

“This is not a hate­ful con­fronta­tion against the KKK,” Fos­ter said. “We’re just not into hatred. “The KKK is on tour. That’s their right. That does­n’t mean it is right.

“Usu­al­ly it’s rock bands that are on tour.“

Will this be a good con­cert? You got me. The only one of the 10 bands I’ve ever heard, Coun­ter­point, sound­ed good when I heard it a sum­mer or two ago. I can’t vouch for the rest of them.

But the con­cert will be good, in the sense that a rock con­cert is unique­ly suit­ed to be an anti-racist plat­form. Rock ‘n’ roll is where black and white cul­tures meet and mix.

It is writ­ten: The blues begat rhythm and blues which begat rock ’n’ roll.

Black artists like John Lee Hook­er and Big Joe Turn­er pio­neered rhythm and blues in the ear­ly ‘5Os. A white boy from Tupe­lo, Miss., Elvis Pres­ley, heard the music, liked it, sang it and helped change it a lit­tle bit in the mid-‘5Os, bring­ing in coun­try-and-West­ern influ­ences.

Whites and blacks have tak­en turns writ­ing the rock/pop stan­dards ever since, chang­ing it all along the way. We’re talk­ing about Bud­dy Hol­ly and Chuck Berry, Lit­tle Richard and Carl Perkins, Car­ole King and Smokey Robin­son, Prince and Bruce Spring­steen.

It is an inter­na­tion­al music today. But it start­ed in Amer­i­ca because this is the only place it could have start­ed. It could hap­pen only in a het­ero­ge­neous coun­try con­fi­dent enough, free enough and smart enough to take the best of what all its peo­ple had to offer.

The music is not always as good as the idea. But nei­ther is Amer­i­ca.

We don’t want to get too philo­soph­i­cal about all this. Rock is no intel­lec­tu­al expe­ri­ence. It’s just plain folks play­ing music and hav­ing a good time. But what­ev­er it isn’t, it sure beats watch­ing peo­ple walk around in sheets.

To all the bands in this con­cert — Tak­er, Savi­ta Blade, Fast Pas­sion, Coun­ter­point, LPTV, Axis, Fore­play, Yer Mom, Inspec­tor #12 and Young Cow­boys — punk, met­al, new wave and Top 40 — good luck.

You have the right idea.


–Bri­an O’Neil, staff writer