Rock Music

Somehow, it's not hard to imagine Richie Fields at 16, driving a van down Coastal Highway at 3 a.m. to deliver fresh doughnuts from his parents' Ocean City bakery to a chain of convenience stores. With his contagious grin and friendly personality, he's always been something of a natural salesman. But picture the future country music singer negotiating a side deal to navigate his doughnut-shop-on-wheels around the streets of a trailer park at 8 a.m. each weekday, honking his horn and calling out, "Doughnuts, pastries!"

In its second year at Pigtown's Carroll Park, The Shindig Music Festival is a rock show in the broad tradition of the national festival movement that provides distinctly Baltimorean notes. A mix of local vendors like Little Havana and Mothers Grille flanked the sides of each stage alongside corporate vendors such as Jagermeister and Jack Daniels. Two opposing stages provided 11 hours of eclectic takes on rock music, and a lineup of bands that included several local acts alongside international touring groups.  Rebel Inc. Rebel Inc. was charged with getting early festival-goers going at the un-rock 'n' roll time of 12:30 p.m. It was a daunting task.

Baltimore loves rock music. And few Baltimore bands have the work ethic of alt-rock/metal outfit Anamide. It has opened for Powerman 5000, Staind, Papa Roach and a host of other nationally renowned groups. The band's CD release party for its new album, Lesson in Control, is tomorrow at Rams Head Live, 20 Market Place in Power Plant Live. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $9. Call 410-244-1131 or go to ramsheadlive.com.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar - another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: SUBFUSC Granted, it's mainly British, but it has it uses.  Subfusc  (pronounced sub-FUSK or SUB-fusk, and you're probably not going to use it in speech anyhow) started out meaning "dull in color,"  "dark," or "dusky. " But "dull in color" suggested metaphoric possibilities, and in time subfusc  was seen to have literary possibilities, standing in for "gloomy" and "somber.

Influence is a funny thing. Spend some time with Frank Black's new album, "The Cult of Ray," and it's easy to hear echoes of the Beach Boys in the music. It's not as if Black is trying to duplicate the close-harmony surf rock sound that powered the Beach Boys' biggest hits, but the songs "The Last Stand of Shazeb Andleeb" and the bittersweet "I Don't Want To Hurt You (Every Single Time)" definitely owe a debt to the meticulous craft and melodic invention that marked Brian Wilson's mid-'60s work with the band.

An announcement that bands of debatable genius Black Sabbath and Blondie are among the latest inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame gave us reason to explore the wide world of rock-related Web sites. rockhall.com: Introduced with a Buddy Holly quote honoring the eternal supremacy of rock's king, Elvis, the Web site of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has a "Today in rock history" feature, an animated music time line, and a schedule of the museum's traveling exhibitions. When we checked in, the site was in search of people who attended an Elvis Presley performance at Cleveland's Brooklyn High School in October 1955.

TODAY BOB DYLAN turns 50, which makes it as good a time as any to assess his place in popular culture. Because his studied impenetrability and musical nonconformity have made him less important than he once was, it is sometimes easy to forget that Dylan, as much as anyone else, is responsible for enabling rock music to influence our culture to the degree it has.Today, the media are regularly filled with discussions about the artistic influence of Madonna, or...

Q: Recently, my teen-age son bought a couple of CDs with lyrics that contain a lot of objectionable references to sex and violence. We're afraid that letting him have this kind of music will suggest that we condone the songs' messages. Should we let him buy more of these in the future?A: Rock music and its lyrics have always caused disagreements between parents and teen-agers. Since such music carries an important symbolism for teen-agers, setting them apart from their parents, it must, to varying degrees, invite disapproval from adults.

For all of the surreal, left-field and at-times difficult music Baltimore produces, it's nice to be reminded there are local musicians doing meat-and-potatoes rock music. Enter Bryson Dudley, whose band (the no-nonsense titled Bryson Dudley Band) headlines the Metro Gallery on Friday. The guitars on Dudley's 2011 EP "Cold Summer Brew" ( download it for free here ) have the right amount of fuzz, a nice change of pace from bands drowning in their own walls of sound. These are straight-forward tales of "girls laying out in the sun" ("Swimming Pool")

Not long ago at a U2 concert, a beered-up young man of about 20 staggered over to four men ranging in age from 35 to 40."Oh, wow," said the kid, surveying our group. "I didn't think people listened to rock music when they got . . . older."Then he held onto the railing for support and flashed possibly the dopiest grin ever seen on the Eastern Seaboard."Listen," I said to my friends, "I say we kill this guy right here. A sharp blow to the back of the head, snap his windpipe, it doesn't matter to me."

When an aging rock star holds a drink more often than he picks up his guitar, he's clearly suffering from a career hangover in Mark Scharf's "Hired Gun. " Although this Baltimore Playwrights Festival entry tends to be as thematically loud as that hard-drinking rocker, the play skillfully develops the escalating tension between the veteran star and a young session musician hired to perform on an intended comeback album. This Theatrical Mining Company production directed by Stacey Bonds keeps a pretty tight focus on that precarious professional relationship.

For all of the surreal, left-field and at-times difficult music Baltimore produces, it's nice to be reminded there are local musicians doing meat-and-potatoes rock music. Enter Bryson Dudley, whose band (the no-nonsense titled Bryson Dudley Band) headlines the Metro Gallery on Friday. The guitars on Dudley's 2011 EP "Cold Summer Brew" ( download it for free here ) have the right amount of fuzz, a nice change of pace from bands drowning in their own walls of sound. These are straight-forward tales of "girls laying out in the sun" ("Swimming Pool")

When Jordan Page was a boy of 11 with a yen for acting, his greatest thrill was playing the Crown Prince in '"The King and I" onstage. Two decades later, in the middle of an odyssey that began on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he's starring in a real-life rock tour with lyrics a lot more volatile than "Shall We Dance" or "Getting to Know You. " As a singer and writer of protest songs that decry big government, big business and the military-industrial complex,...

CBS radio is billing it as "the alternative rock music Baltimore grew up and the personalities who made it popular" returning to the airwaves starting at noon today with the debut of HFS at 97.5 FM on the local radio dial. Featured artists on the playlist will include:  Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Coldplay, Incubus, and Green Day, according to the station's release. Station personalities will include: Tim Virgin, Gina Crash, Jenn Marino,Chris Emery, and Neci.  One  question is whether HFS will be going for the some of the same audience as WTMD-FM, the Towson Unibversity station?

Somehow, it's not hard to imagine Richie Fields at 16, driving a van down Coastal Highway at 3 a.m. to deliver fresh doughnuts from his parents' Ocean City bakery to a chain of convenience stores. With his contagious grin and friendly personality, he's always been something of a natural salesman. But picture the future country music singer negotiating a side deal to navigate his doughnut-shop-on-wheels around the streets of a trailer park at 8 a.m. each weekday, honking his horn and calling out, "Doughnuts, pastries!"

T he Anne Arundel Community Concert Association brought the Canadian Tenors, performers with wide appeal, to its first concert of 2010. Those who attended the Jan. 6 concert at Severna Park High School expecting a Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras-like tenor group might initially have been disappointed to hear this quartet, whose repertoire was more popular than operatic. But they were probably won over by the group's program of current international hits. The Canadian Tenors are Fraser Walters, Remigio Pereira, Clifton Murray and Victor Micallef.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar - another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: SUBFUSC Granted, it's mainly British, but it has it uses.  Subfusc  (pronounced sub-FUSK or SUB-fusk, and you're probably not going to use it in speech anyhow) started out meaning "dull in color,"  "dark," or "dusky. " But "dull in color" suggested metaphoric possibilities, and in time subfusc  was seen to have literary possibilities, standing in for "gloomy" and "somber.

It isn't often that a band captures the sound of the moment as accurately and completely as Rage Against the Machine does. Where most bands fit neatly into a single style, Rage Against the Machine crosses boundaries at will. Listen to the band's selfIt isn't often that a band captures the sound of the moment as accurately and completely as Rage Against the Machine does. Where most bands fit neatly into a single style, Rage Against the Machine crosses boundaries at will. Listen to the band's self-titled debut, and "Bullet in the Head" will have you thinking that the Rage's primary influence was hip-hop; flip over to "Bombtrack," and they sound like a funky metal band; jump over to "Fistful of Steel," and what you'll hear sounds more like industrial music than anything else.

Baltimore loves rock music. And few Baltimore bands have the work ethic of alt-rock/metal outfit Anamide. It has opened for Powerman 5000, Staind, Papa Roach and a host of other nationally renowned groups. The band's CD release party for its new album, Lesson in Control, is tomorrow at Rams Head Live, 20 Market Place in Power Plant Live. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $9. Call 410-244-1131 or go to ramsheadlive.com.

In the shorthand version of rock 'n' roll history, one thing happened four decades ago - The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, forever changing the face of rock music. But, as important as Sgt. Pepper's was - and is - it was only one of numerous iconic albums released in 1967, a year that might be the most important in the history of this popular musical form. The music produced that year still reverberates 40 years later. Some of its albums sound as if they could have been made yesterday.