Fresno Police Fnd. Goes Broke; Local UW Out $50k As Xtian Rock Show Fails

It's pretty bad when a Xtian rock concert can't draw a crowd in the heart of Freeperville...


United Way loses $50,000 on show
Fresno police foundation goes broke over fundraiser.

By Doug Hoagland / The Fresno Bee

(Updated Wednesday, October 26, 2005, 5:45 AM)

United Way of Fresno County has lost $50,000 it loaned the Fresno Police Chief's Foundation to help put on a fundraising concert earlier this month that failed. The event was intended to benefit poor neighborhoods in the city.

United Way President Rich Kriegbaum says the agency did not use payroll deductions from individuals or corporate donations to finance the loan. He added that United Way will not sue or take any other action to demand the money be repaid.

The nonprofit Chief's Foundation, which raises money to buy items not covered in the department's traditional budget, went broke because it spent $100,000 on the Oct. 1 fundraiser at Grizzlies Stadium.

The all-day concert featured contemporary Christian and non-Christian bands. Garner said organizers hoped 5,000 to 7,000 people would attend, but that only around 2,000 tickets were sold. Tickets ranged from $20 to $40.

http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/11398949p-12144881c.html

?

It seems they are perpetually 5-7 years behind the curve.

And it's almost always in major keys so that the "messages" will always sound "hopeful" and "uplifting." :puke:

The Christian music community would do well to give up their sermonizing and sit down with their instruments and practice once in a while. When I lived in Nashville, it was an open secret that the biggest bands in the Xian "rock" movement didn't play their own instruments, like the Monkees. The NEwsboys, DC Talk, Ghoti Hook, etc. were all mediocre musicians at best, who employed hacks and computers in the studio to cover up their weaknesses and played live ONLY at Xian music festivals where there'd be no critics around to tell everyone that the emperor was naked.

It's an almost entirely fake scene.

Most of that crap sounds like a lament...

"Oh, my friends in other rock bands, they're tokin' and drinkin' and fuckin'...But I'm cranking out these tired old songs that sound like they were written in the 80's...But that's alright, sweet Lawd, 'cuz I KNOW I'm gonna be sittin' on your right hand, watchin' them roast in Hell..."

Well....I see Randomkoolzip says it's always in a Major Key...I must have heard more of the ballads. come to think of it, the songs written for "Praise services" ARE in Major Keys. Easier for the tone-deaf congregation to sing along.....

Listen to some of the Xian "rock" songs out there, and I guarantee you'll find very few songs going "You lift me uuuuuupppp!" with in a minor harmonic climate.

They want it to sound as blamd as possible...Sixpence None the Richer, I don't think, have EVER done a song with a minor chord in it.

See my edit. the Major keyed stuff was meant to be sung along to.

But I have to confess, I last listened to much of that crap back in 1990, so they may have changed a lot since then.

This was 1998-2004.

Back in the 70's and 80's, there were a lot of "outsider" Xian singers, who worked on low budgets and relied on enthusiasm and the backing of their churches to get their music out. These were usually not well-adjusted people, so what they came out with often didn't sound very "uplifting," more doomy and finger-wagging, so the thing about minor keys is correct for a lot of the older stuff. (see Kenneth Higney.)

With the formation of Word records cam a new wave of cheery, nigh-caucasian "rock" bands who took a different tack and tried to sound almost exactly like the pop-rock hits on the radio (almost every Xian rock song NOT sung by Michael W. Smith (who's known for molasses-slow ballads like "A Place in this World") is based on the sound of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Nothing Painted Blue...you remember: "I said/What about/Breakfast at Tiffany's..." The messages changed: gone were the admonitions from an angry GAWD, and in were bland, non-specific songs adressed to some phantom "Him" and lots of talk about being "lifted up."

And they changed the mood. It's that phony, bouncy, folky-strummy fresh-faced white person sound.

The audio guy at the station I worked at (who had a lot of input into what was featured on the weekly music video show) was heavily into him. Jeebus, what DEPRESSING sounding shit.

Yeah, the doom and gloom "I'm saved, so I get to look down on the World being destroyed" songs....Yech!

Back then the whole point was to sound like someone else in order to trick the sinners into listening to your music. The Christian bookstore actually had a chart up in their record section that read something like.... Christian artist name sounds like Heathen secular band

Once bands came out that relied on their own sound and were interested in music as music rather than mere church recruiting, things got a lot better.

It's easy to tell the difference. The real bands don't have to use the word "Jesus" in every other line of the song in order to write lyrics.

Unfortunately, some very good rock n roll bands get caught in this limbo-land where they are too "Christian" for mainstream radio to touch them, and the "Christian" stations won't touch them because the lyrics don't meet the previously mentioned "Jesus every other line" rule. Leaves great bands like The Alarm and The 77's out on a limb in double underground status.

they used old school buses with loudspeakers on the top. They need to get back to that "gimmie that ol' time stuff".

The new stuff just doesn't sooth the soul. Gimmie that old time rock and roll. Don't take me to a disco, in 10 minutes I'll be late for the door, just gimmie that old time rock and roll. Here, let me show you how:


Old Time Rock and Roll
Bob Seger


"Just take those old records off the shelf,
I'll sit and listen to 'em by myself,
Today's music ain't got the same soul,
I like that old time rock and roll.

Don't try and take me to a disco,
You'll never even get me out on the floor,
In ten minutes I'll be late for the door,
I like that old time rock and roll.

Still like that old time rock and roll,
That kind of music just soothes my soul,
I reminisce about the days of old,
With that old time rock and roll.

Won't go and hear 'em play a tango,
I'd rather hear some blues or funky old soul,
There's only one sure way to get me to go,
Start playin' old time rock and roll.

Still like that old time rock and roll,
That kind of music just soothes my soul,
I reminisce about the days of old,
With that old time rock and roll.

Call me a relic call me what you will,
Say I'm old fashioned say I'm over the hill.
Today's music ain't got the same soul,
I like that old time rock and roll.

Still like that old time rock and roll,
That kind of music just soothes my soul,
I reminisce about the days of old,
With that old time rock and roll.

(REPEAT CHORUS)"


How can that skinhead stuff compare to the classics. No wonder they lost money.

Enough to not shell out.

sad thing is that the money donated to the united way could have been spent better by just using it to help the poor people.. I am always wary of these 'fundraisers'.. people either want to donate to good causes or they don;t.. Having a party/concert as a ruse to raise money is dicey. Too much needs to be spent upfront to lure contributors in.. One false move , and you lose the seed money..

Unless you build stadiums in an area want to go.

Fresno had a chance to put a nice baseball stadium near their college and the politicians wanted to revitalized DOWNTOWN so they put the baseball stadium there and tried to rebuild downtown around it.

Conclusion: The SAVEMART CENTER the new statium for Fresno State Basketball and tons of concerts is always selling out while neither the Grizzly stadium (the baseball field) nor the Selland arena (previous concert center) sell out ever.

Location, location, location.

Fresno is not the armpit of Cullyfornia, nor the asshole. It is however a textbook case of piss poor municipal planning and forethought. Fifty years ago they ripped out a lot of the streets in the downtown area and turned them into a pedestrian mall to attract more customers to the downtown merchants. Then over the next 20 years they approved suburban mall after suburban mall and sat and watched as all the downtown stores fled to the malls. Now the downtown consists of pawn shops and secondhand stores and the pedestrian mall is loaded with panhandlers and winos and they have spent brazilions on downtown rehab projects to no avail People are fuckin scared to go there and rightly so. They have a nice theater and a good sized convention center and no bookings. And to make matters worse the current mayor is a religious wacko (he was Bubba in the Heat of the Night TV series with Archie Bunker).

On edit: Before he died my dog used to howl at that Christian rock shit.

People here have a dim view of Fresno because 1) it's the home of FreeRepublic, and 2) It has a disproportionate number of right wing bigots (see #1). I lived on the coast, 2 hours from Fresno, and had to go there a few times. It had a cool looking downtown, and some other neat things.. but I found too many of the folks to be just too backward politically and socially. I know there are pockets of interesting and progressive people around there, but that would be a hard place to be if you were.

but I was raised in Tulare County. My mom used to take us to downtown Fresno to buy school clothes every summer and it was quite impressive in those days ( of course I was just a little kid and it was easy to impress me). Now I live about an hour away from Fresno in the other direction and I don't even like to go near the fuckin place. There are a few signs of change however - they just started up a radio station with a lot AAR folks plus Ed Schultz Stephanie Miller etc. and it seems to be doing well. There are 500,000 people in Fresburg now and maybe a few of them now have a brain.

I'm dismayed.

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