There is a reason for my delay on typical music coverage, and it’s because my focus has been drawn back to sports. The whole thing is a little embarrassing, but it’s a darkest before the dawn story I will tell. Yes, it’s true that I may have, once again, overstepped my boundaries.
I’m a habitual line stepper. People told me to “stay in your lane,” and “learn to walk before you run,” but I like making a grand entrance. When a television and radio station said they wanted to double their audience on a budget of zero, I devised too grand of a plan: my bad.
Who here would not want to see Fort Rock return to southwest Florida? There’s no good reason it left. Oh, lack of vendors paying to help support the show?
When it’s sold out every year, bring it back. When that same festival location has a history of selling out since the late 90s when it was 99X who was doing the festival, as opposed to 93X who was running the festival, be at a different name or not, that says there’s an audience.
The X-brand radio stations folded, seemingly nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Detailing this out to the local radio and television station, I explained that there is a gap in the market, and we could very easily try to capture some of that market by doing things on the radio and television, as well as teaming up with the festival team who still runs the Welcome to Rockville Festival. The overstepping came when I dared to try to make an introduction to merely bring everyone together, whoops.
Too much to suggest commandeering a music festival in my first week, let alone suggest bringing rock music to PBS and NPR, with things like a PBS rocks campaign and a documentary of behind the scenes at the festival, while trying to weave in some science into entertainment, I was likened to a Bon Jovi fan and told I was “too commercial for public broadcasting.” They fired me, saying I was “not a good cultural fit.” That’s enough to depress anyone.
They assured me it was nothing I did wrong, other than “not being a good fit culturally.” Okay, maybe I had been scheming behind the scenes, even suggested a new festival location, such as the new Braves Stadium in North Port, or combining it with the Florida International Airshow to give a historical spin to the event. Is it so wrong to not want to have to drive all the way to the other side of the state for just one decent festival here, please?
Tell me it would not be cool to have local celebrities like Sarasota’s Olympic skateboarder, who could be flipping around in between sets. Bring in Rockstar and Redbull to make the adrenaline kick even higher. My little vision was apparently too much for them to handle back then.
Honestly, I had planned on covering Welcome to Rockville, making the drive to the other side of the state. I was not thrilled when they wanted me to do publicity beforehand for free in order to get a press ticket, given my years of previous publications I have done and still never wanted to make that long drive, but the kicker is hearing press still might not even be able to get a photo pass for those who do this publicity work ahead of time for free for them, but that’s besides the point. Just when I started to think of some stories I could write an interviews I could do, my attention got diverted back to sports.
Many of you may recall that I was the sports writer down in Key West, and I have covered a plethora of sporting events throughout the years for other newspapers, magazines, blogs and websites. The funny thing is that I did not even realize I was applying for a sports job. licking my wounds after being rejected by public broadcasting, being just a little too intense for them, I had thought about simply going back to education, and at the time, I thought I was merely applying for a teaching job.
Due to confidentiality agreements, I cannot say what sport, what team, who I am working with, or any of those crazy details. What I can say is that I am helping people transition from other countries. I am helping them not only learn English, but also ways of American culture.
This has been an extremely humbling experience for me. Not only is it the fact that I might have had an ego coming in from the music industry, as it was 20 years ago that I toured on Ozzfest, but it’s also that these guys in sports don’t care about the music industry the way I do. While I may have thought that touring on Ozzfest was a cool thing, being able to tour with all these musicians, these guys from other countries have no idea who the hell Ozzy is, let alone Ozzfest: knock the ego down a little bit.
If I try to explain to them what Ozzfest is, or the various people involved in the heavy-metal music industry, they think I’m talking about the devil. It’s hard to try to explain to people who have never seen that stuff that it is just a façade, just an image. People try to create all kinds of images, and while I might have always thought that the heavy-metal scene image was cool, some of my students are literally not knowing what to think when they see images of pentagrams, dripping blood and shooting fire.
I’m sure a few think I am crazy, but they still indulge my shenanigans. It’s a very cool process, as I am learning as they learn. I’ll admit that I am not native or fluent in their language, knowing a little more than some basics, but they teach me as I teach them; if I pronounce it wrong, they can correct me the same way that I teach them.
It truly does boil down to the essence of teamwork. The whole scenario gives me an entirely different appreciation of teaching and learning, as the students are teaching the teacher, as the teacher tries to teach them, very zen. There’s still moments of frustration when words become like tongue twisters, but when both the students and the teacher can fumble at times and still pick it back up, that just goes along with the practice makes perfect teamwork.
What does that mean for the music scene? Well, instead of Welcome to Rockville, I am scheduled to be on a bus with the team, trying some impromptu English lessons. That does not mean that I am done with the music scene by any means, let alone pyrotechnics and real estate.
Just this morning, I was planning a collaboration. I would say details to follow, but it might just be a wait for the surprise type of scenario. Let’s just say that last night I took one of the latest imports from Chicago to her very first burlesque show: teaching America’s youth.
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